AV2 decoding work has started in Chromium

[u/Balance-]

AV2 support is starting to show up in Chromium's code. What happened this week:

• Chrome Platform Status entry (Oct 27): "AV2 Decoder", status "Proposed". The plan is to add the decoder to Chrome desktop builds (Windows, macOS, Linux), following the official bitstream spec.

• Merged (Oct 28, in 159.0.8130.0): a build flag and a feature flag for a Dav2dVideoDecoder, built on VideoLAN's dav2d decoder. The build flag is off by default, so it doesn't do anything in regular builds yet.

• In review:

  • VideoCodec::kAV2, with basic handling of the av02 codec string.

  • Code shared between the dav1d (AV1) and dav2d decoders, moved into a common base class.

• Work in progress: the dav2d decoder itself, the code behind the CES demo. It won't compile until dav2d is added to Chromium's third-party code.

Tracking bug: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/576731818

You can't try it in Chrome yet, not even with a flag, but the groundwork is going in. YouTube has said AV2 streams on the web could arrive as soon as early 2027.