Google Chrome plans to add AV1 decoder for WebRTC
Google Chrome has a built-in AV1 codec that can be used to view related pictures and videos, but Google feels that the codec support has room for expansion.
WebRTC is a real-time communication technology based on a web browser. Using this technology, you can initiate peer-to-peer communication through the browser without installing software or plug-ins.
In particular, various audio and video conferencing products have begun to use WebRTC technology under the current telecommuting needs, such as Cisco’s WebEx and Google Meet.
These remote audio and video conferencing software use WebRTC technology to optimize transmission efficiency and reduce difficulty in use, but there is still room for optimization.
At present, some audio and video conferencing software already support the use of AV1 decoders to improve video compression efficiency and reduce bandwidth usage and can also improve screen sharing performance.
However, hardware-based AV1 encoders are not yet common, so Google Chrome plans to develop hardware-based encoders to continue to improve the overall performance of WebRTC.
According to Google, the company plans to add CPU-based AV1 encoder support to Google Chrome v89, which is the next stable version update.
Hardware-based encoder support can continue to improve performance, but it actually depends on the performance of the hardware. If the hardware performance is low, the improvement that may be brought is not obvious.
The Firefox browser has not yet stated whether it will bring a hardware-based encoder, after all, Google browser support is relatively faster in this regard.
AV1 is a royalty-free codec launched by the Alliance for Open Media. The Open Media Alliance was jointly initiated and established by Google, Mozilla, Facebook, and Twitter.
So if Google Chrome supports the use of hardware-based AV1 encoder in WebRTC, it stands to reason that Firefox will definitely evaluate and follow up.
When Microsoft uses the Chromium browser directly, it should also support this feature, but I don’t know when Firefox and Microsoft will provide support.
