[cwillu]

Video calls are niche, and offline encoding of video isn't?

Are you sure this isn't just “things I do are commonplace, and things I don't are incredibly niche”?

[sylware]

What? All are niche, and video calls are at best quite rare. People still prefer audio calls or even text messages mostly.

Video calls is just a feature expected on smart phones, and it means there we better have an hardware encoder.

I don't know if AV2 is defining them, but it needs hard "profiles", that to give a scope for hardware implementations.

Well, it all depends on how AV2 is designed, and defining those profiles is very probably a feedback loop between the AV2 designers and hardware implementors.

[circuit10]

I think virtually everyone who works an office job uses Teams/Zoom very often nowadays, I can’t think of anyone I know who wouldn’t

[cwillu]

I recently stayed with a non-technical friend for a few weeks; they easily spent a third of their working hours on zoom calls.