Arif Dikici, a member of Google’s Android Video and Image Codecs team, has announced a major update. Android is now switching to the new AV1 video codec library, dav1d, developed by the VideoLAN project (the same team behind VLC), replacing Google’s original libgav1 library.
This change will be rolled out through Google Play, all the way back to Android 12 (Android S). This means that older hardware devices lacking AV1 hardware decoding capabilities will be able to play AV1 videos at 720p30 resolution using software decoding.
The VideoLAN project has expressed their excitement for this update. However, some Reddit users have reported that YouTube is starting to switch to AV1 codec for older devices (Google has not confirmed this yet), which could impact the video playback performance on several older devices, especially those with Qualcomm chips lacking AV1 hardware decoding.
Source: Arif Dikici, Android Police
TLDR: Android is adopting the dav1d AV1 software decoder, enhancing performance and reducing power consumption. Potential changes in YouTube’s use of AV1 may affect video playback on older devices, especially those without AV1 hardware decoding.
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