VP9 works well too and more supported (default YouTube codec)

My laptop has hardware AV1 encoding and decoding. My TV has AV1 decoding. My phone has AV1 decoding. None of these devices are particularly new.

And don't underestimate dav1d (https://www.videolan.org/projects/dav1d.html). You can comfortably play AV1 video in software on your phone. Try it with VLC.

> You can comfortably play AV1 video in software on your phone

Maybe for about 15 minutes before your battery is drained to 20%. I'm not aware of any software video decoder at all that won't unacceptably heat up your phone and kill your battery.

You really are underestimating just how far e.g. Apple's mobile CPUs have come in terms of raw performance and power-efficiency.

I don't need to try it myself to know that software video decoding on the CPU is not a viable solution on mobile phones.

Of course it is. Even the iPhone 7 from 2016 can play 1080p AV1 video.

Why did you spend all that money on your phone if you're not going to exercise the hardware?

Not OP, but 2hr battery time for video playback vs 20hr would be the entire point of this thread. HW decoding is an order of magnitude more efficient.

That isn't the benchmark set by petcat. petcat's goal post is 15 minutes to 20% battery with AV1 playback.

It's baffling that petcat won't simply try it. Maybe he has awkwardly discovered he does have hardware AV1 support after all.

I've still got my old iPhone 7. I'll dust it off and do the experiment. I think it'll do at least 90 minutes in VLC.

Software video decoding on a CPU is woefully inefficient and will drain your battery. Full stop.

> I've still got my old iPhone 7. I'll dust it off and do the experiment. I think it'll do at least 90 minutes in VLC.

Your "old iPhone 7" probably wont even boot up now, let alone play 1080p AV1 video for more than 5 minutes. Go ahead, try it.

> Your "old iPhone 7" probably wont even boot up now, let alone play 1080p AV1 video for more than 5 minutes.

None of your predictions came true. In fact, you were more than 24 times wrong about it.

My 10-year-old iPhone 7 with its 10-year-old battery and a small crack in the screen, hardware which was released before AV1 was released, did boot up. I charged it to 99%.

I downloaded a 4 minute music video. It's 1080p25 1609kbps AV1 video, 48khz 122kbps stereo Opus audio in an MP4 container.

Using VLC 3.7.2 (which uses dav1d for decoding AV1), I played the video continuously on repeat. It took 122 minutes for the battery to go from 99% to 20%. At 20% the phone switched to low power mode and kept playing the video.

I should have put it in low power mode the whole time. I'll try that next to see if it can go longer.

In the meantime, what we can conclude is that the iPhone 7 is mighty.

dav1d, most especially, is mighty.

petcat isn't.

Low power mode did indeed make a difference.

I charged to 100%, put the phone in low power mode, and ran the same test.

This time it took 200 minutes to go from 100% to 20% battery.

It's coming along nicely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Hardware_encoding_and_deco...

Also decoding on a reasonably powerful (non-accelerated) cpu is fast enough for 1080p, not ideal for battery life but still.