Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.
Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.
Massively better quality per byte.
You know, the sole purpose of a lossy video codec?
But the licensing is also far better for end consumers.
None of that is going to benefit you if your phone barfs its guts trying to decode it. Until you get a phone with hardware support it’s going to be purely theoretical. And if Google forces you to decode 720p AV1 in software when you have a perfectly good AVC and HEVC hardware decoder just sitting there is going to be downright stupid.