ExoPlayer AV1 extension

The AV1 extension provides Libgav1VideoRenderer, which uses libgav1 native library to decode AV1 videos.

License note

Please note that whilst the code in this repository is licensed under Apache 2.0, using this extension also requires building and including one or more external libraries as described below. These are licensed separately.

Build instructions (Linux, macOS)

To use this extension you need to clone the ExoPlayer repository and depend on its modules locally. Instructions for doing this can be found in ExoPlayer's top level README.

In addition, it's necessary to fetch cpu_features library and libgav1 with its dependencies as follows:

Set the following environment variables:

cd "<path to exoplayer checkout>"
EXOPLAYER_ROOT="$(pwd)"
AV1_EXT_PATH="${EXOPLAYER_ROOT}/extensions/av1/src/main"

Fetch cpu_features library:

cd "${AV1_EXT_PATH}/jni" && \
git clone https://github.com/google/cpu_features

Fetch libgav1:

cd "${AV1_EXT_PATH}/jni" && \
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/codecs/libgav1 libgav1

Fetch Abseil:

cd "${AV1_EXT_PATH}/jni/libgav1" && \
git clone https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp.git third_party/abseil-cpp

Install CMake.

Having followed these steps, gradle will build the extension automatically when run on the command line or via Android Studio, using CMake and Ninja to configure and build libgav1 and the extension's JNI wrapper library.

Build instructions (Windows)

We do not provide support for building this extension on Windows, however it should be possible to follow the Linux instructions in Windows PowerShell.

Using the extension

Once you‘ve followed the instructions above to check out, build and depend on the extension, the next step is to tell ExoPlayer to use Libgav1VideoRenderer. How you do this depends on which player API you’re using:

If you‘re passing a DefaultRenderersFactory to SimpleExoPlayer.Builder, you can enable using the extension by setting the extensionRendererMode parameter of the DefaultRenderersFactory constructor to EXTENSION_RENDERER_MODE_ON. This will use Libgav1VideoRenderer for playback if MediaCodecVideoRenderer doesn’t support decoding the input AV1 stream. Pass EXTENSION_RENDERER_MODE_PREFER to give Libgav1VideoRenderer priority over MediaCodecVideoRenderer.
If you've subclassed DefaultRenderersFactory, add a Libvgav1VideoRenderer to the output list in buildVideoRenderers. ExoPlayer will use the first Renderer in the list that supports the input media format.
If you've implemented your own RenderersFactory, return a Libgav1VideoRenderer instance from createRenderers. ExoPlayer will use the first Renderer in the returned array that supports the input media format.
If you're using ExoPlayer.Builder, pass a Libgav1VideoRenderer in the array of Renderers. ExoPlayer will use the first Renderer in the list that supports the input media format.

Note: These instructions assume you're using DefaultTrackSelector. If you have a custom track selector the choice of Renderer is up to your implementation. You need to make sure you are passing a Libgav1VideoRenderer to the player and then you need to implement your own logic to use the renderer for a given track.

Using the extension in the demo application

To try out playback using the extension in the demo application, see enabling extension decoders.

Rendering options

There are two possibilities for rendering the output Libgav1VideoRenderer gets from the libgav1 decoder:

GL rendering using GL shader for color space conversion
- If you are using SimpleExoPlayer with PlayerView, enable this option by setting surface_type of PlayerView to be video_decoder_gl_surface_view.
- Otherwise, enable this option by sending Libgav1VideoRenderer a message of type C.MSG_SET_VIDEO_DECODER_OUTPUT_BUFFER_RENDERER with an instance of VideoDecoderOutputBufferRenderer as its object.
Native rendering using ANativeWindow
- If you are using SimpleExoPlayer with PlayerView, this option is enabled by default.
- Otherwise, enable this option by sending Libgav1VideoRenderer a message of type C.MSG_SET_SURFACE with an instance of SurfaceView as its object.

Note: Although the default option uses ANativeWindow, based on our testing the GL rendering mode has better performance, so should be preferred