It is Pion based, so most of what I’ve written here on Pion and its trajectory applies to LiveKit as well.

Note that it has been adopted by some interesting companies recently.

> This means that whatever vendors do, there are always going to be devices where HEVC isn’t going to be available, and in such cases, HEVC would be useless.

That's implementation details when it comes to really deploying HEVC on device and MCU/SFU. Device will typically negotiate both HEVC and other codecs (for example AV1) so you'll have a fallback no-matter you're on simulcast or not.

> And if that is the case, then why not go with VP9 and AV1 instead for example?

We will drive adoption of AV1 & VP9 on Web as well besides of the effort for HEVC. My vision is to enable the ecosystem and let software vendors/developers select whatever they think appropriate. To that end we work with community to make it possible.

Thanks for this.

The main challenge with HEVC is availability due to the inability to use software implementation (business wise, due to the patent costs). This means that whatever vendors do, there are always going to be devices where HEVC isn’t going to be available, and in such cases, HEVC would be useless.

Those who decide to adopt and use HEVC with WebRTC need to be aware of that fact and understand that they need to further invest in supporting other codecs anyway. And if that is the case, then why not go with VP9 and AV1 instead for example? (VP9 for today, AV1 for the future)

I am surprised to get the comment of "team needs to find something to do" after spending so much extra effort to enable HEVC ecosystem for both streaming and WebRTC in Chrome 🙂

We do get HEVC support for streaming in Chrome finally there benefiting all. Why that wouldn't happen for WebRTC usage as well? There would be no magic happening if we sit there doing nothing in the SW stack, and we should not all in your wish list for WebRTC/HEVC to come true at the beginning of enabling.

Dan,

Thanks for this, though I can't really agree with you, amd here is why:

👉 VP9 is the common video codec using in WebRTC applications today right behind VP8 and H.264 (only better in compression rates), so yes – adopt VP9.

👉 VVC is nowhere to be seen with WebRTC today. Once it will be somewhere near WebRTC, I'll likely write about it. But it isn't, so no need for anyone using WebRTC to think about it (how would you get it working in a web browser with WebRTC?)

👉 HEVC won't be adopted in most WebRTC applications until WebRTC supports it with encoding and not decoding only (and with software codecs, which is highly unlikely given the complex patent royalty schemes involved). This limits the use cases greatly and with it, its adoption. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

👉 How is AV1 proprietary? It is standardized by a standardization organization, it even has no royalties pool scheme associated with it, and it has many of the top industry leaders backing it up. What makes MPEG4 a better place to standardize codecs than the Alliance of Open Media?

I'll beat the two of you on pessimism :-p

Thanks Sean.

I think the naive part is not on the personal level – there you definitely ended up successful.
When I look at open source, there are too much monetization challenges for a company (not an individual). To make an open source project successful long term from a business perspective is really hard. To the point of me thinking it is almost magic when someone pulls it off.
Look at how much hurdles Matrix is having in our space.

As of WebRTC, I guess that the two of us might even be able to compete of who is more pessimistic… (more on that soon)

I had some smaller projects as examples originally, but got feedback that it wouldn’t be as impactful on the audience.

Can you expand on how my take was naieve? Would love to understand/learn. Externally tend to be overly optimistic/idealistic. Internally I feel pretty frustrated/burned out by the status quo with WebRTC usage.