[Implemented] Add support for av1 coding standard

This detailed analysis of video codex is all well and good, but I think it misses the point of the thread. Which is, to just take what YouTube is pushing out there and have Plex play it without having to do a conversion. Most people don’t care what it’s encoded with. They just want it to play.

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This isn’t just a youtube thing. just ran across this one:
MirrorMask (2005) 1080p BluRay AV1 Opus Multi Audio [AV1D]
Lastly: As an attempt to spread and hopefully popularize AV1

And whomever said “feature requests are measured in years, not months” shouldn’t that be “measured in alternate universes and right after you win the lotto”
I suppose once it is implemented, I’ll get a message about my MP3 files needing a plex pass to listen to AV1 as well

Youtube just sucks lol. Not a big deal to convert to a more universal format.

Why are people complaining that plex has an issue, when they should be complaining to YouTube???

I say this because I’ve been playing the format-change game for 20 years or more now. It’s just getting old. If people would resist new formats that don’t do anything much better than what we have now… it would only be an issue when a format really does need to update.

I say this from the future flood of 8K, 16K, 24K, and holographic content that they all have planned for us… none of which is even useful BTW as our eyes can’t distinguish all that wonderful resolution (except for holograms… can’t wait for those!)

I respectfully disagree. And am holding in a future laugh when you have to re-encode again for the newest flavor after AV1 as soon as it comes out…

For those who have substantial libraries, a FAR more valuable feature is for plex to MAINTAIN supporting LEGACY codecs and file types… As soon as they stop supporting MKV and MP4 then I will give my pass to someone else and go find another option as there is no way in hell I’m going to re-encode 3,000 movies… ever.

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+1 from me for AV1 support. I’ve got a few videos and movies that can’t be played currently without it. Thanks.

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AV1 seems to be finally picking up. Even Intel’s 11th gen CPUs support hardware decoding of AV1 with the latest QuickSync.
Time for Plex to catch-up as well.

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https://9to5google.com/2021/01/16/google-android-tv-av1-codec-requirement/

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products that lack support, including Chromecast with Google TV, can’t simply get a software update

I woulda expected THAT to include AV1!

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Just speaking as a very long time Plex user, I remember when bug fixes and features were added in hours not years.

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+1 for AV1 support. Pretty please

+1 for AV1

+1, it should not take this long

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Depends on how you look at it :wink:

Well I can tell you there is a difference. It’s hard to get the same quality and compare the bitrates, but the other way around is easier:


This is h.264
This is h.265 (People usually say AV1>h.265, but let’s just assume they’re equal)

This is the exact same bitrate. (you see the difference?) - which means, for about the same quality, you’d need far less space. And as I host my files on a 500G SSD, space is limited. And expensive! Oh and Bandwidth is too, but I guess I’m not too concerned about that rn.

Edit:Found a comparison of 264, 265 and AV1 here, with constant bitrates.
And it’s not just that AV1 has better quality, it is cheaper as well; it’s royalty-free unlike HEVC (h.265).

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+1 this needs to be added ASAP

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+1 for AVC. And my encoded content did not come from youtube or 4k downloader.

What’s more concerning to me is that even if the player is capable of direct play of AV1, it seems like it still cannot be played.

There will ALWAYS be a cool, new, cutting-edge codec to support. Even if it cannot be transcoded, Plex should still be capable of direct play if the player supports it.

This does not seem like a sustainable design model and while I really like aspects of the Plex ecosystem, the ability to seamlessly play media is a core feature of Plex that really should be essentially bullet proof.

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+1, but also keep in mind there should be nothing stopping plex from live transcoding av1 for playback, since it’s just using ffmpeg on the backend anyway, and ffmpeg has supported av1 for a while now. plex seems to be doing some filtering of the codecs it’ll transode, and that is definitely something that needs to end. if ffmpeg supports it, plex should at least transcode it. in fact, you can see the plex distributed version of ffmpeg shows av1 support, so it’s the app itself that’s filtering out the codec. which is so disappointingly restrictive.

"/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Transcoder" -codecs | ag av1
[...]
  libavutil      56. 26.100 / 56. 26.100
  libavcodec     58. 52.100 / 58. 52.100
  libavformat    58. 27.104 / 58. 27.104
  libavfilter     7. 49.100 /  7. 49.100
  libswscale      5.  4.100 /  5.  4.100
  libswresample   3.  4.100 /  3.  4.100
 ..V.L. av1                  Alliance for Open Media AV1
 ..A.L. wmav1                Windows Media Audio 1
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+1 on supporting AV1.

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@atsuru AVC and AV1 are different unrelated codecs

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+1…Please!

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+1 on this. Almost a full year since original post, and nothing?

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