> For head content, it's okay to streaming multiple formats because the viewership is huge, so streaming multiple formats, although increase our cost, it still actually save our traffic cost, so it's still worth while. But for the tail content, it's very different. We can only afford streaming one single format, so our strategy is currently still doing H.264 using hardware, high-density hardware solution, but we're hoping towards 2024, 2025, the AV1 ecosystem is ready, we want to switch to AV1 100%.
>
> Jan Ozer: Did you say 2024 and 2025?
>
> Yueshi Shen: 2024, this is our projection right now. But on the other hand, so as I said, our AV1 release will be, for the head content will be a lot sooner, we are hoping 2022-2023 we are going to release AV1 for the head content. But for the head content, we will continue to stream dual-format, AV1, H.264. But for the tail content, we are hoping towards five years from now to AV1, whole eco, every five-year-old device supports AV1. Then, we will be switching to AV1 100%.
The initial roll-out will probably just involve transcoding at sub-source quality settings to save bandwidth with no encoding to be done by the streamer.
Right now, platforms have only talked about AV1 for transcoding purposes, so there's not the same urgency to add encoding support on consumer-level GPUs. Even thought it'd be amazing to see AV1 streams and YouTube videos, it's mostly on the server-end to cut costs and make things easier on people with data plans and cellular.
In 2019, Twitch predicted roll-out of AV1 support by 2024, but then the pandemic happened: https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...:
> For head content, it's okay to streaming multiple formats because the viewership is huge, so streaming multiple formats, although increase our cost, it still actually save our traffic cost, so it's still worth while. But for the tail content, it's very different. We can only afford streaming one single format, so our strategy is currently still doing H.264 using hardware, high-density hardware solution, but we're hoping towards 2024, 2025, the AV1 ecosystem is ready, we want to switch to AV1 100%.
>
> Jan Ozer: Did you say 2024 and 2025?
>
> Yueshi Shen: 2024, this is our projection right now. But on the other hand, so as I said, our AV1 release will be, for the head content will be a lot sooner, we are hoping 2022-2023 we are going to release AV1 for the head content. But for the head content, we will continue to stream dual-format, AV1, H.264. But for the tail content, we are hoping towards five years from now to AV1, whole eco, every five-year-old device supports AV1. Then, we will be switching to AV1 100%.
The initial roll-out will probably just involve transcoding at sub-source quality settings to save bandwidth with no encoding to be done by the streamer.
Right now, platforms have only talked about AV1 for transcoding purposes, so there's not the same urgency to add encoding support on consumer-level GPUs. Even thought it'd be amazing to see AV1 streams and YouTube videos, it's mostly on the server-end to cut costs and make things easier on people with data plans and cellular.