Intel SVT-AV1: Open Source AV1 Encoder for heavy loads
Intel has released the open source video encoder SVT-AV1 (Scalable Video Technology-AV1), using the now popular AV1 video format , the successor to VP9. The AV1 encoder is designed for high-load streaming services and has great scaling capabilities - up to a maximum of 112 logical processors. Earlier, Intel has already released a similar encoder for the H.265 / HEVC codec.
SVT-AV1 released under the BSD-2 license, the following platforms are supported:
- Windows Server 2016
- Ubuntu 16.04 Server LTS
- Ubuntu 18.04 Server LTS
- MacOS
The encoder, designed for heavy CPU loads, imposes rather strict requirements on the hardware platform. From a computational point of view, it is highly optimized for modern Intel Xeon Scalable and Xeon D processors, although in principle it can be launched on any Intel Core processor starting from the fifth generation (translated to Intel Xeon generations - E5-v4 or later). In addition to parallelization, vector instructions up to AVX2 are actively used to optimize coding. Brag, of course, ugly, but sometimes - appropriate. Much of the vector optimizations of this product are done by vikky13
As for the memory, the picture is as follows: 48 GB of memory is at least necessary for 4k encoding, 16 GB for using FullHD. All numbers are for a 10-bit stream.
| Resolution | The minimum amount of RAM (GB) |
|---|---|
| 4k | 48 |
| 1080p | sixteen |
| 720p | eight |
| 480p | four |
Technically, the software, like the reference AV1 implementation from AOM, is a library, the simplest example of an application for using it, and also includes a patch to ffmpeg to “connect” SVT-AV1 there.
A detailed description of the system requirements, methods of assembly and installation, dependencies, and so on can be found on the project page on GitHub .
Well, if you want to not only encode, but also view the received video, then the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, VLC, and the newborn open cross-platform decoder Dav1d will cope with this task .