title: British thermal unit

text: While units of heat are often supplanted by energy units in scientific work, they are still used in some fields. For example, in the United States the price of natural gas is quoted in dollars per the amount of natural gas that would give 1 million BTUs (1 "MMBtu") of heat energy if burned.


title: British thermal unit

text: A BTU was originally defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 avoirdupois pound of liquid water by 1 degree Fahrenheit at a constant pressure of one atmospheric unit. There are several different definitions of the BTU that differ slightly. This reflects the fact that the temperature change of a mass of water due to the addition of a specific amount of heat (calculated in energy units, usually joules) depends slightly upon the water's initial temperature. As seen in the table below, definitions of the BTU based on different water temperatures vary by up to 0.5%.


title: British thermal unit

text: Units kBtu are used in building energy use tracking and heating system sizing. Energy Use Index (EUI) represents kBtu per square foot of conditioned floor area. "k" stands for 1,000.


title: British thermal unit

text: The unit Mbtu is used in natural gas and other industries to indicate 1,000 BTUs. However, there is an ambiguity in that the metric system (SI) uses the prefix "M" to indicate 'Mega-', one million (1,000,000). Even so, "MMbtu" is often used to indicate one million BTUs particularly in the oil and gas industry.


title: British thermal unit

text: Energy analysts accustomed to the metric "k" ('kilo-') for 1,000 are more likely to use MBtu to represent one million, especially in documents where M represents one million in other energy or cost units, such as MW, MWh and $.


title: British thermal unit

text: The unit 'therm' is used to represent 100,000 BTUs. A decatherm is 10 therms or one MMBtu (million Btu). The unit "quad" is commonly used to represent one quadrillion (10) BTUs.


title: British thermal unit

text: A Btu can be approximated as the heat produced by burning a single wooden kitchen match or as the amount of energy it takes to lift a weight .


title: British thermal unit

text: The SI unit of power for heating and cooling systems is the watt. Btu "per hour" (Btu/h) is sometimes used in North America and the United Kingdom - the latter for air conditioning mainly, though "Btu/h" is sometimes abbreviated to just "Btu". "MBH"—thousands of Btus per hour—is also common.


title: British thermal unit

text: The Btu should not be confused with the Board of Trade Unit (BTU), an obsolete UK synonym for kilowatt hour ().


title: British thermal unit

text: The Btu is often used to express the conversion-efficiency of heat into electrical energy in power plants. Figures are quoted in terms of the quantity of heat in Btu required to generate 1 kW⋅h of electrical energy. A typical coal-fired power plant works at , an efficiency of 32–33%.


title: British thermal unit

text: The centigrade heat unit (CHU) is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one Celsius degree. It is equal to 1.8 BTU or 1,899 joules. In 1974, this unit was "still sometimes used" in the United Kingdom as an alternative to BTU.


title: British thermal unit

text: Another legacy unit for energy in the metric system is the calorie, which is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.


title: Biltong

text: Biltong is a form of dried, cured meat that originated in Southern African countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia). Various types of meat are used to produce it, ranging from beef to game meats such as ostrich or kudu. The cut may also vary, either fillets of meat cut into strips following the grain of the muscle, or flat pieces sliced across the grain. It is related to beef jerky in that they are both spiced, dried meats; however, the typical ingredients, taste, and production processes may differ.


title: Biltong

text: Meat can be preserved by curing it in salt, brine, or vinegar, as well as saltpetre (potassium nitrate). The potassium nitrate kills" Clostridium botulinum", the deadly bacterium that causes botulism, while the acidity of the vinegar inhibits its growth. According to the World Health Organization, "C. botulinum" will not grow in acidic conditions (pH less than 4.6); so the toxin will not be formed in acidic foods.


title: Biltong

text: The antimicrobial properties of certain spices have also been drawn upon since ancient times. The spices introduced to biltong by the Dutch include pepper, coriander, and cloves.


title: Biltong

text: In January 2017, a research group at the University of Beira Interior in Portugal published a study on the antimicrobial properties of coriander oil (coriander being one of the main spices in the most basic of biltong recipes) against 12 bacterial strains, and found that 10 of the 12 strains of bacteria were killed with a relatively mild concentration of coriander oil (1.6%). In the two strains that were not effectively killed, "Bacillus cereus" and "Enterococcus faecalis", the coriander oil reduced their growth significantly.


title: Biltong

text: The need for food preservation in Southern Africa was pressing. Iceboxes and refrigerators had not been invented yet, and building up herds of livestock took a long time. With game in abundance in Southern Africa, however, traditional methods were called upon to preserve the meat of large African animals, such as the eland.


title: Biltong

text: The meat was prepared with vinegar and spices then hung to be air dried for a fortnight during the winter, when the colder temperatures further inhibited bacterial and fungal growth. Once suitably dried, the biltong was ready for packing in cloth bags, which allowed air circulation to help prevent mold.


title: Biltong

text: Modern-day ingredients sometimes added include balsamic vinegar or malt vinegar, sugar, dry ground chili peppers, nutmeg, paprika, lemon juice, garlic, bicarbonate of soda, Worcestershire sauce, onion powder, and saltpetre.


title: Biltong

text: Prior to the introduction of refrigeration, the curing process was used to preserve all kinds of meat in Southern Africa, but biltong is most commonly made today from beef, primarily because of its widespread availability and lower cost relative to game. For the finest cuts, fillet, sirloin, or steaks cut from the hip, such as topside or silverside, are used. Other cuts can be used, but are not as high in quality.


title: Biltong

text: Traditionally, biltong was only made during the cold of winter when the risk of bacterial growth and mold would be at a minimum. Some recipes require the meat to be marinated in a vinegar solution (grape vinegar is traditional but balsamic and cider also work very well) for a few hours, then the vinegar is poured off before the meat is flavoured with salt and spices. The spice mix is sprinkled liberally over the meat and rubbed in. Saltpetre is optional and can be added as an extra preservative (necessary only for wet biltong that is not going to be frozen). The meat should then be left for a further few hours (or refrigerated overnight) and any excess liquid poured off before the meat is hung in the dryer.


title: Biltong

text: Other recipes, which were handed down from generation to generation, require the biltong to be left overnight in the vinegar, salt, and spice solution (between 12 and 24 hours). The spice mix traditionally consists of equal amounts of rock salt, whole coriander (slightly roasted), roughly ground black pepper, and brown sugar. The vinegar serves as a primary inhibitor of "Clostridium botulinum" bacteria, according to the World Health Organization, while the salt, coriander, pepper, and cloves all have antimicrobial properties.


title: Biltong

text: Traditionally, biltong was made during the cold winters of the South African highveld for best results. The cold, dry air typically dried out the biltong much more effectively, and in the best possible food safety environment. Mold and bacterial risk are at a natural minimum, and thicker biltong cuts can be hung to dry slowly for a richer texture, fuller flavor, and darker colour. Heat has only been introduced into the process in recent years, and traditional biltong makers maintain that heat makes for an inferior end result. Due to increased risk of bacterial and fungal growth, the heated method, such as that used in cardboard or wooden biltong boxes (urban) or climate-controlled dry rooms (commercial), cannot be used without the addition of nitrates or nitrites (curing salts). Depending on the spices used, a variety of flavours may be produced. Biltong can also be made in colder climates by using an electric lamp to dry the meat, but care must be taken to ventilate, as mould can begin to form on the meat.


title: Biltong

text: A traditional slow dry will deliver a medium cure in about four days. An electric fan-assisted oven set to 40–70 °C (100–160 °F), with the door open a fraction to let out moist air, can dry the meat in about four hours. Although oven-dried is ready to eat a day or two after preparation, traditional biltong makers still consider slow-dried meat to be safer and of superior quality.


title: Biltong

text: Biltong is a common product in Southern African butcheries and grocery stores, and can be bought in the form of wide strips (known as "stokkies", meaning "little sticks"). It is also sold in plastic bags, sometimes shrink-wrapped, and may be either finely shredded or sliced as biltong chips.


title: Biltong

text: Also, some specialised retailers sell biltong. These shops may sell biltong as "wet" (moist), "medium", or "dry". Additionally, some customers prefer it with a lot of fat, while others prefer it as lean as possible.


title: Biltong

text: While biltong is usually eaten as a snack, it can also be diced up into stews, or added to muffins or pot bread. Biltong-flavoured potato crisps have also been produced, and some cheese spreads have biltong flavour. Finely shredded biltong is eaten on slices of bread and in sandwiches.


title: Biltong

text: Biltong is a high-protein food. Often, 200 g of beef are required to make 100 g of biltong, and the process of making biltong preserves most of the protein content. Some biltong can have up to 67% protein content.


title: Biltong

text: Biltong's popularity has spread to many other countries with large South African populations - Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United States, and India. Biltong is also produced within South African expatriate communities across the globe, for example in Germany, Ireland, and even South Korea.


title: Biltong

text: Biltong produced in South Africa may not be imported into Britain, according to rules governing the importation of meat-based products from non-EU countries laid down by HM Customs and Excise and its successor HM Revenue and Customs, thus it is made in the UK.


title: Biltong

text: In the United States, biltong is relatively rare, as beef jerky has been traditionally the more popular dried meat snack. Within the last few years, biltong has begun a small emergence within the United States, particularly from South African immigrants who have brought their local culture and foods with them. Due to concerns related to the presence of foot-and-mouth disease in South Africa, the United States Department of Agriculture requires a meat inspection certificate issued by a South African government authority to accompany imports of biltong.


title: Shoe size

text: There are a number of different shoe-size systems used worldwide. While all shoe sizes use a number to indicate the length of the shoe, they differ in exactly what they measure, what unit of measurement they use, and where the size 0 (or 1) is positioned. Some systems also indicate the shoe width, sometimes also as a number, but in many cases by one or more letters. Some regions use different shoe-size systems for different types of shoes (e.g. men's, women's, children's, sport, and safety shoes). This article sets out several complexities in the definition of shoe sizes. In practice, shoes are often tried on for both size and fit before they are purchased.


title: Shoe size

text: The length of a person's foot is commonly defined as the distance between two parallel lines that are perpendicular to the foot and in contact with the most prominent toe and the most prominent part of the heel. Foot length is measured with the subject standing barefoot and the weight of the body equally distributed between both feet.


title: Shoe size

text: The sizes of the left and right feet are often slightly different. In this case, both feet are measured, and purchasers of mass-produced shoes are advised to purchase a shoe size based on the larger foot, as most retailers do not sell pairs of shoes in non-matching sizes.


title: Shoe size

text: Each size of shoe is considered suitable for a small interval of foot lengths, typically limited by half-point of the shoe size system.


title: Shoe size

text: All these measures differ substantially from one another for the same shoe. For example, the inner cavity of a shoe must typically be 15 mm longer than the foot, and the shoe last would be 2 size points larger than the foot, but this varies between different types of shoes and the shoe size system used. The typical range lies between for the UK/US size system and for the European size system, but may extend to and .


title: Shoe size

text: Sizing systems also differ in the units of measurement they use. This also results in different increments between shoe sizes, because usually only "full" or "half" sizes are made.


title: Shoe size

text: Since the early 2000s, labels on sports shoes typically include sizes measured in all four systems: EU, UK, US and cm (Mondopoint).


title: Shoe size

text: Some systems also include the width of a foot (or the girth of a shoe last), but do so in a variety of ways:


title: Shoe size

text: The width for which these sizes are suitable can vary significantly between manufacturers. The A–E width indicators used by most American, Canadian, and some British shoe manufacturers are typically based on the width of the foot, and common step sizes are inch (4.8 mm).


title: Shoe size

text: There could be differences between various shoe size tables from shoemakers and shoe stores. They are usually due to the following factors:


title: Shoe size

text: Conversion tables available on the Web often contain obvious errors, not taking into account different zero points or wiggle room.


title: Shoe size

text: Although shoe size systems are not fully standardised, the ISO/TC 137 had released a technical specification ISO/TS 19407:2015 for converting shoe sizes across various local sizing systems. Even though the problem of converting shoe sizes accurately has yet to be fully resolved, this standard serves as "a good compromise solution" for shoe-buyers.


title: Shoe size

text: Shoe size in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Pakistan and South Africa is based on the length of the last used to make the shoes, measured in barleycorns ( inch) starting from the smallest size deemed practical, which is called size zero. It is not formally standardised. Note that the last is typically longer than the foot heel to toe length by to in or to 2 barleycorns, so to determine the shoe size based on actual foot length one must add 2 barleycorns.


title: Shoe size

text: A child's size zero is equivalent to 4 inches (a hand = 12 barleycorns = 10.16 cm), and the sizes go up to size (measuring barleycorns, or ). Thus, the calculation for a children's shoe size in the UK is:


title: Shoe size

text: An adult size one is then the next size up (26 barleycorns, or ) and each size up continues the progression in barleycorns. The calculation for an adult shoe size in the UK is thus:


title: Shoe size

text: Although this sizing standard is nominally for both men and women, some manufacturers use different numbering for women's UK sizing.


title: Shoe size

text: In Australia and New Zealand, the UK system is followed for men and children's footwear. Women's footwear follows the US sizings.


title: Shoe size

text: In Mexico, shoes are sized either according to the foot length they are intended to fit, in cm, or alternatively to another variation of the barleycorn system, with sizes calculated approximately as:


title: Shoe size

text: In the United States and Canada, the traditional system is similar to British but there are different zero points for children's, men's, and women's shoe sizes. The most common is the customary system where men's shoes are one size longer than the UK equivalent, making a men's 13 in the US the same size as a men's 12 in the UK.


title: Shoe size

text: The customary system is offset by barleycorn, or , comparing to the UK sizes. The men's range starts at size 1, with zero point corresponding to the children's size 13 which equals barleycorns or .


title: Shoe size

text: However, most US manufacturers are using greater offsets, such as and 1 barleycorns. Therefore in current practice, US men's size 1 equals 25 barleycorns, or , so the calculation for a male shoe size in the United States is:


title: Shoe size

text: In the "standard" or "FIA" (Footwear Industries of America) scale, women's sizes are men's sizes plus 1 (so a men's is a women's ):


title: Shoe size

text: Children's shoes start from size zero, which is equivalent to inches ( barleycorns = 99.48 mm), and end at . Thus the formula for children's sizes in the US is


title: Shoe size

text: Alternatively, a Mondopoint-based scale running from K4 to K13 and then 1 to 7 is in use. K4 to K9 are toddler sizes, K10 to K13 are pre-school and 1 to 7 are grade school sizes.


title: Shoe size

text: The Brannock Device is a measuring instrument invented by Charles F. Brannock in 1925 and now found in many shoe stores. The recent formula used by the Brannock device assumes a foot length of 2 barleycorns less than the length of the last; thus, men's size 1 is equivalent to a last's length of and foot's length of , and children's size 1 is equivalent to last's length and foot's length.


title: Shoe size

text: The device also measures the length of the arch, or the distance between the heel and the ball (metatarsal head) of the foot. For this measurement, the device has a shorter scale at the instep of the foot with an indicator that slides into position. If this scale indicates a larger size, it is taken in place of the foot's length to ensure proper fitting.


title: Shoe size

text: The device also measures the width of the foot and assigns it designations of AAA, AA, A, B, C, D, E, EE, or EEE. The widths are  inches apart and differ by shoe length.


title: Shoe size

text: Some shoe stores and medical professionals use optical 3D surface scanners to precisely measure the length and width of both feet and recommend the appropriate shoe model and size.


title: Shoe size

text: In the Continental European system, the shoe size is the length of the last, expressed in Paris points or , for both sexes and for adults and children alike. Note that the last is typically longer than the foot heel to toe length by to , or 2 to Paris points, so to determine the shoe size based on actual foot length one must add 2 Paris points.


title: Shoe size

text: The Continental European system is used in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and most other continental European countries. It is also used in Middle Eastern countries (such as Iran), Brazil—which uses the same method but subtracts 2 from the final result, in effect measuring foot size instead of last size—and, commonly, Hong Kong. The system is sometimes described as Stich size (from "Pariser Stich", the German name for the Paris point), or "Stichmaß" size (from a Geman name of a micrometer for internal measurements).


title: Shoe size

text: The Mondopoint shoe length system is widely used in sports industry to size athletic shoes, ski boots, skates, and pointe ballet shoes; it was also adopted as the primary shoe sizing system in the Soviet Union, Russia, East Germany, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, and as an optional system in United Kingdom, India, Mexico, and European countries. The Mondopoint system is also used by NATO and other military services.


title: Shoe size

text: The Mondopoint system was introduced in the 1970s by International Standard ISO 2816:1973 "Fundamental characteristics of a system of shoe sizing to be known as Mondopoint" and ISO 3355:1975 "Shoe sizes – System of length grading (for use in the Mondopoint system)". ISO 9407:2019, "Shoe sizes—Mondopoint system of sizing and marking", is the current version of the standard.


title: Shoe size

text: The Mondopoint system is based on average foot length and foot width for which the shoe is suitable, measured in millimetres. The length of the foot is measured as horizontal distance between the perpendiculars in contact with the end of the most prominent toe and the most prominent part of the heel. The width of the foot is measured as horizontal distance between vertical lines in contact with the first and fifth metatarsophalangeal joints. The perimeter of the foot is the length of foot circumference, measured with a flexible tape at the same points as foot width. The origin of the grade is zero.


title: Shoe size

text: The labeling typically includes foot length, followed by an optional foot width: a shoe size of 280/110 indicates a foot length of and width of . Other customary markings, such as EU, UK and US sizes, may also be used.


title: Shoe size

text: Because Mondopoint takes the foot width into account, it allows for better fitting than most other systems. A given shoe size shall fit every foot with indicated average measurements, and those differing by no more than a half-step of the corresponding interval grid. Standard foot lengths are defined with interval steps of 5 mm for casual footwear and steps of 7.5 mm for specialty (protective) footwear. The standard is maintained by ISO Technical Committee 137 "Footwear sizing designations and marking systems."


title: Shoe size

text: In Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea, the Mondopoint system is used as defined by national standard Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) S 5037:1998 and its counterparts Guobiao (GB/T) 3293.1-1998, Chinese National Standard (CNS) 4800-S1093:2000 and Korean Standards Association (KS) M 6681:2007.


title: Shoe size

text: Foot length and girth (foot circumference) are taken into account. The foot length is indicated in centimetres; an increment of 5 mm is used.


title: Shoe size

text: The length is followed by designators for girth (A, B, C, D, E, EE, EEE, EEEE, F, G), which are specified in an indexed table as foot circumference in millimetres for each given foot length; foot width is also included as supplemental information. There are different tables for men's, women's, and children's (less than 12 years of age) shoes. Not all designators are used for all genders and in all countries. For example, the largest girth for women in Taiwan is EEEE, whereas in Japan, it is F.


title: Shoe size

text: Historically the Soviet Union used the European (Paris point) system, but the Mondopoint metric system was introduced in the 1980s by GOST 24382-80 "Sizes of Sport Shoes" (based on ISO 2816:1973) and GOST 11373-88 "Shoe Sizes" (based on ISO 3355:1975), and lately by GOST R 58149-2018 (based on ISO 9407:1991)


title: Shoe size

text: Standard metric foot sizes can be converted to the nearest Paris point ( cm) sizes using approximate conversion tables; shoes are marked with both foot length in millimetres, as for pointe ballet shoe sizes, and last length in European Paris point sizes (although such converted "Stichmaß" sizes may come to 1 size smaller than comparable European-made adult footwear, and up to sizes smaller for children's footwear, according to ISO 19407 shoe size definitions). Foot lengths are aligned to 5 mm intervals for sports and casual shoes, and 7.5 mm for protective/safety shoes. Optional foot width designations includes narrow, normal (medium or regular), and wide grades.


title: Shoe size

text: Infant sizes start at 16 (95 mm) and pre-school kids at 23 (140 mm); schoolchildren sizes span 32 (202.5 mm) to 40 (255 mm) for girls and 32 to 44 (285 mm) for boys. Adult sizes span 33 (210 mm) to 44 for women and 38 (245 mm) to 48 (310 mm) for men.


title: Shoe size

text: ISO/TS 19407:2015 "Footwear - Sizing - Conversion of sizing systems" is a technical specification from the International Organization for Standardization. It contains basic description and conversion tables for major shoe sizing systems including Mondopoint with length steps of 5 mm and 7.5 mm, European Paris point system, and UK -inch system. The standard has also been adopted as Russian GOST R 57425-2017.


title: Shoe size

text: The standard is maintained by ISO/TC 137, which also developed ISO/TS 19408:2015 "Footwear - Sizing - Vocabulary and terminology"; in development are companion standards ISO/TS 19409 "Footwear - Sizing - Measurement of last dimensions" and ISO/TS 19410 "Footwear - Sizing - Inshoe measurement".


title: Shoe size

text: The adult shoe sizes are calculated from typical last length, which is converted from foot length in millimetres by adding an allowance of two shoe sizes:


title: Shoe size

text: Direct conversion between adult UK, Continental European and Mondopoint shoe size systems is derived as follows:


title: Shoe size

text: Using these formulas, the standard derives shoe size tables for adults and children, based on actual foot length measurement (insole) in millimetres. Typical last length ranges are also included (13 to 25 mm over foot length for adults, 8% greater than foot length plus 6 mm for children).


title: Shoe size

text: Exact foot lengths may contain repeating decimals because the formulas include division by 3; in practice, approximate interval steps of 6.67 mm and 8.47 mm are used, and sizes are rounded to either the nearest half size or closest matching Mondopoint size.


title: Shoe size

text: It is recommended to include size marking in each of the four sizing systems on the shoe label and on the package. The principal system used for manufacturing the shoe needs to be placed first and emphasized with a boldface.


title: Shoe size

text: The standard includes quick conversion tables for adult shoe size marking; they provide matching sizes for shoes marked in Mondopoint, European, and UK systems. Converted values are rounded to a larger shoe size to increase comfort.


title: AV1

text: AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. In 2018, Facebook conducted testing that approximated real-world conditions, and the AV1 reference encoder achieved 34%, 46.2% and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.


title: AV1

text: Like VP9, but unlike H.264/AVC and HEVC, AV1 has a royalty-free licensing model that does not hinder adoption in open-source projects.


title: AV1

text: The Alliance's motivations for creating AV1 included the high cost and uncertainty involved with the patent licensing of HEVC, the MPEG-designed codec expected to succeed AVC. Additionally, the Alliance's seven founding members – Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix – announced that the initial focus of the video format would be delivery of high-quality web video. The official announcement of AV1 came with the press release on the formation of the Alliance for Open Media on 1 September 2015. Only 42 days before, on 21 July 2015, HEVC Advance's initial licensing offer was announced to be an increase over the royalty fees of its predecessor, AVC. In addition to the increased cost, the complexity of the licensing process increased with HEVC. Unlike previous MPEG standards where the technology in the standard could be licensed from a single entity, MPEG-LA, when the HEVC standard was finished, two patent pools had been formed with a third pool on the horizon. In addition, various patent holders were refusing to license patents via either pool, increasing uncertainty about HEVC's licensing. According to Microsoft's Ian LeGrow, an open-source, royalty-free technology was seen as the easiest way to eliminate this uncertainty around licensing.


title: AV1

text: The negative effect of patent licensing on free and open-source software has also been cited as a reason for the creation of AV1. For example, building an H.264 implementation into Firefox would prevent it from being distributed free of charge since licensing fees would have to be paid to MPEG-LA. Free Software Foundation Europe has argued that FRAND patent licensing practices make the free software implementation of standards impossible due to various incompatibilities with free software licenses.


title: AV1

text: Many of the components of the AV1 project were sourced from previous research efforts by Alliance members. Individual contributors had started experimental technology platforms years before: Xiph's/Mozilla's Daala published code in 2010, Google's experimental VP9 evolution project VP10 was announced on 12 September 2014, and Cisco's Thor was published on 11 August 2015. Building on the code base of VP9, AV1 incorporates additional techniques, several of which were developed in these experimental formats.


title: AV1

text: Many companies are part of Alliance for Open Media, including Samsung, Vimeo, Microsoft, Netflix, Mozilla, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and ARM, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Amazon, Hulu, VideoLAN, Adobe and Apple. Apple is one of the main members of AOmedia, although it joined after the formation. The management of the AV1 streams has been officially included among the typological videos manageable by Coremedia.


title: AV1

text: The first version 0.1.0 of the AV1 reference codec was published on 7 April 2016. Although a soft feature freeze came into effect at the end of October 2017, development continued on several significant features. One of these, the bitstream format, was projected to be frozen in January 2018 but was delayed due to unresolved critical bugs as well as further changes to transformations, syntax, the prediction of motion vectors, and the completion of legal analysis. The Alliance announced the release of the AV1 bitstream specification on 28 March 2018, along with a reference, software-based encoder and decoder. On 25 June 2018, a validated version 1.0.0 of the specification was released. On 8 January 2019 a validated "version 1.0.0 with Errata 1" of the specification was released.


title: AV1

text: Martin Smole from AOM member Bitmovin said that the computational efficiency of the reference encoder was the greatest remaining challenge after the bitstream format freeze had been completed. While working on the format, the encoder was not targeted for production use and speed optimizations were not prioritized. Consequently, the early version of AV1 was orders of magnitude slower than existing HEVC encoders. Much of the development effort was consequently shifted towards maturing the reference encoder. In March 2019, it was reported that the speed of the reference encoder had improved greatly and within the same order of magnitude as encoders for other common formats.


title: AV1

text: On 21 January 2021, the MIME type of AV1 was defined as video/AV1. The usage of AV1 using this MIME type is restricted to Real-time Transport Protocol purposes only.


title: AV1

text: AV1 aims to be a video format for the web that is both state of the art and royalty free. According to Matt Frost, head of strategy and partnerships in Google's Chrome Media team, "The mission of the Alliance for Open Media remains the same as the WebM project."


title: AV1

text: A recurring concern in standards development, not least of royalty-free multimedia formats, is the danger of accidentally infringing on patents that their creators and users did not know about. This concern has been raised regarding AV1, and previously VP8, VP9, Theora and IVC. The problem is not unique to royalty-free formats, but it uniquely threatens their "status" as royalty-free.


title: AV1

text: To fulfill the goal of being royalty free, the development process requires that no feature can be adopted before it has been confirmed independently by two separate parties to not infringe on patents of competing companies. In cases where an alternative to a patent-protected technique is not available, owners of relevant patents have been invited to join the Alliance (even if they were already members of another patent pool). For example, Alliance members Apple, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft are also licensors in MPEG-LA's patent pool for H.264. As an additional protection for the royalty-free status of AV1, the Alliance has a legal defense fund to aid smaller Alliance members or AV1 licensees in the event they are sued for alleged patent infringement.


title: AV1

text: Under patent rules adopted from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), technology contributors license their AV1-connected patents to anyone, anywhere, anytime based on reciprocity (i.e. as long as the user does not engage in patent litigation). As a defensive condition, anyone engaging in patent litigation loses the right to the patents of "all" patent holders.


title: AV1

text: This treatment of intellectual property rights (IPR), and its absolute priority during development, is contrary to extant MPEG formats like AVC and HEVC. These were developed under an IPR uninvolvement policy by their standardization organisations, as stipulated in the ITU-T's definition of an open standard. However, MPEG's chairman has argued this practice has to change, which it is: EVC is also set to have a royalty-free subset, and will have switchable features in its bitstream to defend against future IPR threats.


title: AV1

text: The creation of royalty-free web standards has been a long-stated pursuit for the industry. In 2007, the proposal for HTML5 video specified Theora as mandatory to implement. The reason was that public content should be encoded in freely implementable formats, if only as a "baseline format", and that changing such a baseline format later would be hard because of network effects.


title: AV1

text: The Alliance for Open Media is a continuation of Google's efforts with the WebM project, which renewed the royalty-free competition after Theora had been surpassed by AVC. For companies such as Mozilla that distribute free software, AVC can be difficult to support as a per-copy royalty is unsustainable given the lack of revenue stream to support these payments in free software (see FRAND § Excluding costless distribution). Similarly, HEVC has not successfully convinced all licensors to allow an exception for freely distributed software (see HEVC § Provision for costless software).


title: AV1

text: The performance goals include "a step up from VP9 and HEVC" in efficiency for a low increase in complexity. NETVC's efficiency goal is 25% improvement over HEVC. The primary complexity concern is for software decoding, since hardware support will take time to reach users. However, for WebRTC, live encoding performance is also relevant, which is Cisco's agenda: Cisco is a manufacturer of videoconferencing equipment, and their Thor contributions aim at "reasonable compression at only moderate complexity".


title: AV1

text: Feature-wise, AV1 is specifically designed for real-time applications (especially WebRTC) and higher resolutions (wider color gamuts, higher frame rates, UHD) than typical usage scenarios of the current generation (H.264) of video formats, where it is expected to achieve its biggest efficiency gains. It is therefore planned to support the color space from ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020 and up to 12 bits of precision per color component. AV1 is primarily intended for lossy encoding, although lossless compression is supported as well.


title: AV1

text: AV1 is a traditional block-based frequency transform format featuring new techniques. Based on Google's VP9, AV1 incorporates additional techniques that mainly give encoders more coding options to enable better adaptation to different types of input.


title: AV1

text: The Alliance published a reference implementation written in C and assembly language (codice_1, codice_2) as free software under the terms of the BSD 2-Clause License. Development happens in public and is open for contributions, regardless of AOM membership.


title: AV1

text: The development process was such that coding tools were added to the reference code base as "experiments", controlled by flags that enable or disable them at build time, for review by other group members as well as specialized teams that helped with and ensured hardware friendliness and compliance with intellectual property rights (TAPAS). When the feature gained some support in the community, the experiment was enabled by default, and ultimately had its flag removed when all of the reviews were passed. Experiment names were lowercased in the "configure" script and uppercased in conditional compilation flags.


title: AV1

text: To better and more reliably support HDR and color spaces, corresponding metadata can now be integrated into the video bitstream instead of being signaled in the container.


title: AV1

text: Frame content is separated into adjacent same-sized blocks referred to as superblocks. Similar to the concept of a macroblock, superblocks are square-shaped and can either be of size 128×128 or 64×64 pixels. Superblocks can be divided in smaller blocks according to different partitioning patterns. The four-way split pattern is the only pattern whose partitions can be recursively subdivided. This allows superblocks to be divided into partitions as small as 4×4 pixels.


title: AV1

text: "T-shaped" partitioning patterns are introduced, a feature developed for VP10, as well as horizontal or vertical splits into four stripes of 4:1 and 1:4 aspect ratio. The available partitioning patterns vary according to the block size, both 128×128 and 8×8 blocks can't use 4:1 and 1:4 splits. Moreover, 8×8 blocks can't use "T" shaped splits.


title: AV1

text: Two separate predictions can now be used on spatially different parts of a block using a smooth, oblique transition line ("wedge-partitioned prediction"). This enables more accurate separation of objects without the traditional staircase lines along the boundaries of square blocks.


title: AV1

text: More encoder parallelism is possible thanks to configurable prediction dependency between tile rows (codice_3).


title: AV1

text: AV1 performs internal processing in higher precision (10 or 12 bits per sample), which leads to quality improvement by reducing rounding errors.


title: AV1

text: Predictions can be combined in more advanced ways (than a uniform average) in a block ("compound prediction"), including smooth and sharp transition gradients in different directions ("wedge-partitioned prediction") as well as implicit masks that are based on the difference between the two predictors. This allows the combination of either two inter predictions or an inter and an intra prediction to be used in the same block.


title: AV1

text: A frame can reference 6 instead of 3 of the 8 available frame buffers for temporal (inter) prediction while providing more flexibility on bi-prediction (codice_4).


title: AV1

text: The "Warped Motion" (codice_5) and "Global Motion" (codice_6) tools in AV1 aim to reduce redundant information in motion vectors by recognizing patterns arising from camera motion. They implement ideas that were attempted in preceding formats like e.g. MPEG-4 ASP, albeit with a novel approach that works in three dimensions. There can be a set of warping parameters for a whole frame offered in the bitstream, or blocks can use a set of implicit local parameters that get computed based on surrounding blocks.


title: AV1

text: "Switch frames" (S-frame) are a new inter-frame type that can be predicted using already-decoded reference frames from a higher-resolution version of the same video to allow switching to a lower resolution without the need for a full keyframe at the beginning of a video segment in the adaptive bitrate streaming use case.


title: AV1

text: Intra prediction consists of predicting the pixels of given blocks only using information available in the current frame. Most often, intra predictions are built from the neighboring pixels above and to the left of the predicted block. The DC predictor builds a prediction by averaging the pixels above and to the left of block.


title: AV1

text: Directional predictors extrapolate these neighboring pixels according to a specified angle. In AV1, 8 main directional modes can be chosen. These modes start at an angle of 45 degrees and increase by a step size of 22.5 degrees up until 203 degrees. Furthermore, for each directional mode, six offsets of 3 degrees can be signaled for bigger blocks, three above the main angle and three below it, resulting in a total of 56 angles (codice_7).


title: AV1

text: The "TrueMotion" predictor was replaced with a Paeth predictor which looks at the difference from the known pixel in the above-left corner to the pixel directly above and directly left of the new one and then chooses the one that lies in direction of the smaller gradient as predictor. A palette predictor is available for blocks with up to 8 dominant colors, such as some computer screen content. Correlations between the luminosity and the color information can now be exploited with a predictor for chroma blocks that is based on samples from the luma plane (codice_8). In order to reduce visible boundaries along borders of inter-predicted blocks, a technique called overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC) can be used. This involves extending a block's size so that it overlaps with neighboring blocks by 2 to 32 pixels, and blending the overlapping parts together.


title: AV1

text: To transform the error remaining after prediction to the frequency domain, AV1 encoders can use square, 2:1/1:2, and 4:1/1:4 rectangular DCTs (codice_9), as well as an asymmetric DST for blocks where the top and/or left edge is expected to have lower error thanks to prediction from nearby pixels, or choose to do no transform (identity transform).


title: AV1

text: It can combine two one-dimensional transforms in order to use different transforms for the horizontal and the vertical dimension (codice_10).


title: AV1

text: AV1 has new optimized quantization matrices (codice_11). The eight sets of quantization parameters that can be selected and signaled for each frame now have individual parameters for the two chroma planes and can use spatial prediction. On every new superblock, the quantization parameters can be adjusted by signaling an offset.


title: AV1

text: In-loop filtering combines Thor's constrained low-pass filter and Daala's directional deringing filter into the "Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter", codice_12. This is an edge-directed conditional replacement filter that smooths blocks roughly along the direction of the dominant edge to eliminate ringing artifacts.


title: AV1

text: There is also the "loop restoration filter" (codice_13) based on the Wiener filter and self-guided restoration filters to remove blur artifacts due to block processing.


title: AV1

text: "Film grain synthesis" (codice_14) improves coding of noisy signals using a parametric video coding approach.


title: AV1

text: Due to the randomness inherent to film grain noise, this signal component is traditionally either very expensive to code or prone to get damaged or lost, possibly leaving serious coding artifacts as residue. This tool circumvents these problems using analysis and synthesis, replacing parts of the signal with a visually similar synthetic texture based solely on subjective visual impression instead of objective similarity. It removes the grain component from the signal, analyzes its non-random characteristics, and instead transmits only descriptive parameters to the decoder, which adds back a synthetic, pseudorandom noise signal that's shaped after the original component. It is the visual equivalent of the Perceptual Noise Substitution technique used in AC3, AAC, Vorbis, and Opus audio codecs.


title: AV1

text: Daala's entropy coder (codice_15), a non-binary arithmetic coder, was selected for replacing VP9's binary entropy coder. The use of "non-binary" arithmetic coding helps evade patents but also adds bit-level parallelism to an otherwise serial process, reducing clock rate demands on hardware implementations. This is to say that the effectiveness of modern binary arithmetic coding like CABAC is being approached using a greater alphabet than binary, hence greater speed, as in Huffman code (but not as simple and fast as Huffman code).


title: AV1

text: AV1 also gained the ability to adapt the symbol probabilities in the arithmetic coder per coded symbol instead of per frame (codice_16).


title: AV1

text: Of main importance to video conferencing, "scalable video coding" is a general technique, not unique to AV1, of restricting and structuring video frame dependencies so that one or more lower bitrate video streams are extractable from a higher bitrate stream with better quality. This differs from adaptive bitrate streaming in that some compression efficiency in each higher bitrate adaptation is given up for the benefit of the overall stream. The encoding process is also less redundant and demanding.


title: AV1

text: AV1 has provisions for temporal and spatial scalability. This is to say that both framerate and resolution are usable ways to define a lower bitrate substream.


title: AV1

text: A first comparison from the beginning of June 2016 found AV1 roughly on par with HEVC, as did one using code from late January 2017.


title: AV1

text: In April 2017, using the 8 enabled experimental features at the time (of 77 total), Bitmovin was able to demonstrate favorable objective metrics, as well as visual results, compared to HEVC on the "Sintel" and "Tears of Steel" short films. A follow-up comparison by Jan Ozer of "Streaming Media Magazine" confirmed this, and concluded that "AV1 is at least as good as HEVC now". Ozer noted that his and Bitmovin's results contradicted a comparison by Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications from late 2016 that had found AV1 65.7% less efficient than HEVC, underperforming even H.264/AVC which they concluded as being 10.5% more efficient. Ozer justified this discrepancy by having used encoding parameters endorsed by each encoder vendor, as well as having more features in the newer AV1 encoder. Decoding performance was at about half the speed of VP9 according to internal measurements from 2017.


title: AV1

text: Tests from Netflix in 2017, based on measurements with PSNR and VMAF at 720p, showed that AV1 was about 25% more efficient than VP9 (libvpx). Tests from Facebook conducted in 2018, based on PSNR, showed that the AV1 reference encoder was able to achieve 34%, 46.2% and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.


title: AV1

text: Tests from Moscow State University in 2017 found that VP9 required 31% and HEVC 22% more bitrate than AV1 in order to achieve similar levels of quality. The AV1 encoder was operating at speed "2500–3500 times lower than competitors" due to the lack of optimization (which was not available at that time).


title: AV1

text: Tests from University of Waterloo in 2020 found that when using a mean opinion score (MOS) for 2160p (4K) video AV1 had bitrate saving of 9.5% compared to HEVC and 16.4% compared to VP9. They also concluded that at the time of the study at 2160p the AV1 video encodes on average took 590× longer compared to encoding with AVC; while HEVC took on average 4.2× longer and VP9 took on average 5.2× longer than AVC respectively.


title: AV1

text: The latest encoder comparison by Streaming Media Magazine as of September 2020, which used moderate encoding speeds, VMAF, and a diverse set of short clips, indicated that the open-source libaom and SVT-AV1 encoders


title: AV1

text: took about twice as long time to encode as x265 in its "veryslow" preset while using 15-20% less bitrate, or about 45% less bitrate than "x264 veryslow". The best-in-test AV1 encoder, Visionular's Aurora1, in its "slower" preset, was as fast as "x265 veryslow" while saving 50% bitrate over "x264 veryslow".


title: AV1

text: CapFrameX tested the performance of GPUs with AV1 decoding. On October 5, 2022, Cloudflare announced that it has a beta player.


title: AV1

text: AV1 defines three profiles for decoders which are Main, High, and Professional. The Main profile allows for a bit depth of 8- or 10-bits per sample with 4:0:0 (greyscale) and 4:2:0 (quarter) chroma sampling. The High profile further adds support for 4:4:4 chroma sampling (no subsampling). The Professional profile extends capabilities to full support for 4:0:0, 4:2:0, 4:2:2 (half) and 4:4:4 chroma sub-sampling with 8, 10 and 12 bit color depths.


title: AV1

text: AV1 defines levels for decoders with maximum variables for levels ranging from 2.0 to 6.3. The levels that can be implemented depend on the hardware capability.


title: AV1

text: Example resolutions would be 426×240@30fps for level 2.0, 854×480@30fps for level 3.0, 1920×1080@30fps for level 4.0, 3840×2160@60fps for level 5.1, 3840×2160@120fps for level 5.2, and 7680×4320@120fps for level 6.2. Level 7 has not been defined yet.


title: AV1

text: In October 2016, Netflix stated they expected to be an early adopter of AV1. On 5 February 2020, Netflix began using AV1 to stream select titles on Android, providing 20% improved compression efficiency over their VP9 streams. On 9 November 2021, Netflix announced it had begun streaming AV1 content to a number of TVs with AV1 decoders as well as the PlayStation 4 Pro.


title: AV1

text: In 2018, YouTube began rolling out AV1, starting with its AV1 Beta Launch Playlist. According to the description, the videos are (to begin with) encoded at high bitrate to test decoding performance, and YouTube has "ambitious goals" for rolling out AV1. YouTube for Android TV supports playback of videos encoded in AV1 on capable platforms as of version 2.10.13, released in early 2020.


title: AV1

text: In February 2019, Facebook, following their own positive test results, said they would gradually roll out AV1 as soon as browser support emerges, starting with their most popular videos. Also, Meta (Facebook's parent company) is said to be interested in the SVT-AV1 as Google engineer Matt Frost said in an Intel YouTube video. The intention was carrying out a first test in 2023, when the HW will be widespread, but it hasn't expressed statement in a latest Streaming Media video. In the meantime MSVP (Meta Scalable Video Processor) was announced and an article was published in a popular scientific research website on 15 October 2022.


title: AV1

text: On November 4, 2022 AV1 was announced with an article on the technology blog, engineering.fb and on the same day a video by Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram Reels was posted which shows AV1 codec compared with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. This would be helpful on slower internet connections, but it improves the experience for everyone.


title: AV1

text: In June 2019, Vimeo's videos in the "Staff picks" channel were available in AV1. Vimeo is using and contributing to Mozilla's Rav1e encoder and expects, with further encoder improvements, to eventually provide AV1 support for all videos uploaded to Vimeo as well as the company's "Live" offering.


title: AV1

text: On 30 April 2020, iQIYI announced support for AV1 for users on PC web browsers and Android devices, according to the announcement, as the first Chinese video streaming site to adopt the AV1 format.


title: AV1

text: Twitch plans to roll out AV1 for its most popular content in 2022 or 2023, with universal support projected to arrive in 2024 or 2025.


title: AV1

text: In April 2021, Roku removed the YouTube TV app from the Roku streaming platform after a contract expired. It was later reported that Roku streaming devices do not use processors that support the AV1 codec. In December 2021, YouTube and Roku agreed to a multiyear deal to keep both the YouTube TV app and the YouTube app on the Roku streaming platform. Roku had argued that using processors in their streaming devices that support the royalty-free AV1 codec would increase costs to consumers.


title: AV1

text: Several other parties have announced to be working on encoders, including EVE for AV1 (in beta testing), NGCodec, Socionext, Aurora and MilliCast.


title: AV1

text: Several Alliance members demonstrated AV1 enabled products at IBC 2018, including Socionext's hardware accelerated encoder. According to Socionext, the encoding accelerator is FPGA based and can run on an Amazon EC2 F1 cloud instance, where it runs 10 times faster than existing software encoders.


title: AV1

text: According to Mukund Srinivasan, chief business officer of AOM member Ittiam, early hardware support will be dominated by software running on non-CPU hardware (such as GPGPU, DSP or shader programs, as is the case with some VP9 hardware implementations), as fixed-function hardware will take 12–18 months after bitstream freeze until chips are available, plus 6 months for products based on those chips to hit the market. The bitstream was finally frozen on 28 March 2018, meaning chips could be available sometime between March and August 2019. According to the above forecast, products based on chips could then be on the market at the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020.


title: AV1

text: Sisvel, a Luxembourg-based company, has formed a patent pool, and are selling a patent license for AV1.


title: AV1

text: The pool was announced in early 2019, but a list of claimed patents was first published on 10 March 2020. This list contains over 1050 patents.


title: AV1

text: The substance of the patent claims remains to be challenged. Sisvel has stated that they won't seek content royalties, but their license makes no exemption for software.


title: AV1

text: , the Alliance for Open Media has not responded to the list of patent claims. Their statement after Sisvel's initial announcement reiterated the commitment to their royalty-free patent license and made mention of the "AOMedia patent defense program to help protect AV1 ecosystem participants in the event of patent claims", but did not mention the Sisvel claim by name.


title: AV1

text: According to The WebM Project, Google does not plan to alter their current or upcoming usage plans of AV1 even though they are aware of the patent pool, and third parties cannot be stopped from demanding licensing fees from any technology that is open-source, royalty-free, and/or free-of-charge.


title: AV1

text: On July 7, 2022, it was revealed that the European Union's antitrust regulators had opened an investigation into AOM and its licensing policy. It said this action may be restricting the innovators' ability to compete with the AV1 technical specification, and also eliminate incentives for them to innovate. The Commission has information that AOM and its members may be imposing licensing terms (mandatory royalty-free cross licensing) on innovators that were not a part of AOM at the time of the creation of the AV1 technical, but whose patents are deemed essential to (its) technical specifications


title: AV1

text: AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is an image file format specification for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF file format. It competes with HEIC which uses the same container format, built upon ISOBMFF, but HEVC for compression.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: The Choice is a 2016 American romantic drama film directed by Ross Katz and written by Bryan Sipe, based on Nicholas Sparks' 2007 novel of the same name about two neighbors who fall in love at their first meeting. The movie stars Benjamin Walker, Teresa Palmer, Maggie Grace, Alexandra Daddario, Tom Welling and Tom Wilkinson.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Principal photography began on October 13, 2014, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Lionsgate released the film on February 5, 2016.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Travis Shaw (Benjamin Walker) is a veterinarian, living in the city of Wilmington, NC, who falls in love on his first meeting with Gabby Holland (Teresa Palmer), who has moved into the house next door.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Their initial meeting, however, is rather rocky as Travis is hosting a noisy backyard picnic, complete with loud music while Gabby is trying to study next door. Gabby is a medical student who is in a relationship with a fellow doctor, Ryan McCarthy (Tom Welling). Travis has an on again, off again relationship with a girl named Monica. With Ryan out of state overseeing a new hospital opening, Gabby and Travis spend more time together, starting a relationship.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Ryan returns, and is keen to resume his relationship with Gabby. Unsure of her feelings, Gabby tells Travis that their relationship wasn't necessarily serious, so she says yes to Ryan's marriage proposal. Monica (Alexandra Daddario) breaks up with Travis, telling him that she knows about him and Gabby and that he should fight for her because they love each other. Travis goes to the hospital, only to find out she left after breaking off her engagement with Ryan. Ryan punches him for the affair. Travis then goes to Gabby's family home to propose. After convincing her of his love, she says yes. They marry and over the course of the next few years they have two children and become a happy family.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: One evening, after a dinner to which Travis is late due to a work emergency, Gabby drives back home but is involved in an accident with another car. She survives but is now in a coma, which seems permanent. Travis, wracked with guilt, has to decide whether to take her off life support.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: After a storm nearly destroys their house, Travis finds the wind chimes that Gabby had on her porch. He goes to his island and builds a gazebo, hanging them there. The shell chime starts to ring in the wind and Travis runs to the hospital where Gabby has woken up from her coma. When he walks in she says "you're late." He takes her home where she is welcomed by the family and Travis' sister's newborn child.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: To make up for missing their dinner date Travis and Gabby have one in the front yard, where she tells him she heard everything he said whilst in the coma. Stating that he was "breathing for her." The movie finishes with Travis and Gabby with their children and dogs sitting in the gazebo 'Gabby's Point', looking out onto the shore and up at the stars.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: On June 10, 2014, Lionsgate acquired the American and United Kingdom rights to make a film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' 2007 novel "The Choice". Bryan Sipe wrote the script for the film, which Sparks, Theresa Park and Peter Safran produced. On September 2, Ross Katz was set to direct the film, which Sparks co-financed and -produced with his Nicholas Sparks Productions, along with Safran's The Safran Company. On September 30, Benjamin Walker was cast to play the lead role in the film, Travis Parker. On the same day, Teresa Palmer was cast as the female lead, Gabby Holland. On October 7, Tom Wilkinson was added to the cast to play Dr. Shep. On October 8, Alexandra Daddario, Tom Welling, and Maggie Grace joined the film. Welling plays Ryan, a doctor at his father's practice who is Gabby's boyfriend, and Grace plays Travis' sister, Stephanie.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Principal photography on the film began on October 13, 2014, in Wilmington, North Carolina, and lasted through November 21. For the first three days, the crew and extras filmed at the "Dockside Restaurant & Bar" and "Bridge Tender Marina" along with actors, near Wrightsville Beach. On October 20, filming was taking place at Hanover Seaside Club in Wrightsville Beach. The production later moved to downtown Wilmington, where filming took place in a house.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: "The Choice" grossed $18.7 million in North America and $4.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $23.4 million.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: The film was released in North America on February 5, 2016, alongside "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "Hail, Caesar!". The film was projected to gross $7–9 million from 2,631 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $290,000 from Thursday night previews and $6,050,443 in its opening weekend, finishing fifth at the box office behind "Kung Fu Panda 3" ($21.2 million), "Hail, Caesar!" ($11.4 million), "" ($7 million) and "The Revenant" ($6.9 million).


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: "The Choice" received negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 11%, based on 84 reviews, with an average rating of 3.57/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Like the 10 Nicholas Sparks movies before it, "The Choice" finds tragedy striking star-crossed lovers in the sun-dappled South – yet even for those who loved its predecessors, this gauzy melodrama may feel painfully formulaic." Metacritic reports a score of 26 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Choice (2016 film)

text: Frank Schenk of the Hollywood Reporter criticized the film as being "the cinematic equivalent of staring at a Hallmark Card for two hours." A. A. Dowd of the A.V. Club called it "a formulaic mush". Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times wrote the film "moves inexorably to its inevitable tear-jerky end." Andrew Barker of Variety describes the film as "beginning as a merely mediocre retread of standard Sparksian tropes, veering off into self-parody around the hour-mark, and finally concluding with one of the most brazenly cynical climaxes recently committed to film." Devan Coggan of Entertainment Weekly concluded that the film was a "predictable, recycled mess."


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Habsburg Spain is a contemporary historiographical term referring to the huge extent of territories (including modern-day Spain, a piece of south-east France, eventually Portugal, and many other lands outside of the Iberian Peninsula) ruled between the 16th and 18th centuries (1516–1713) by kings from the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg (also associated with its role in the history of Central and Eastern Europe). Habsburg Spain was a composite monarchy and a personal union. The Habsburg Hispanic Monarchs (chiefly Charles I and Philip II) reached the zenith of their influence and power ruling the Spanish Empire. They controlled territories over the five continents, including the Americas, the East Indies, the Low Countries, Belgium, Luxembourg, and territories now in Italy, France and Germany in Europe, the Portuguese Empire from 1580 to 1640, and various other territories such as small enclaves like Ceuta and Oran in North Africa. This period of Spanish history has also been referred to as the "Age of Expansion".


title: Habsburg Spain

text: With the Habsburgs, Spain was one of the greatest political and military powers in Europe and the world for much of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the Habsburg's period, Spain ushered in the Spanish Golden Age of arts and literature producing some of the world's most outstanding writers and painters and influential intellectuals, including Teresa of Ávila, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Diego Velázquez, El Greco, Domingo de Soto, Francisco Suárez and Francisco de Vitoria.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain or "the Spains", referring to Spanish territories across different continents in this period, initially covered the entire Iberian peninsula, including the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, the Principality of Catalonia, Castile, León, Navarre and, from 1580, Portugal.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469 resulted in the union of the two main crowns, Castile and Aragon, which eventually led to the de facto unification of Spain, after the culmination of the "Reconquista" with the conquest of Granada in 1492 and of Navarre in 1512–1529. Isabella and Ferdinand were bestowed the title of "Catholic King and Queen" by Pope Alexander VI in 1494, and the term "Monarchia Catholica" (Catholic Monarchy, Modern Spanish: "Monarquía Católica") remained in use for the monarchy under the Spanish Habsburgs. The Habsburg period is formative of the notion of "Spain" in the sense that was institutionalized in the 18th century.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain as a unified state came into being "de jure" after the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 that succeeded the multiple crowns of its former realms. After the death in 1700 of Spain's last Habsburg king Charles II, the resulting War of the Spanish Succession led to the ascension of Philip V of the Bourbon dynasty and began a new centralizing state formation.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1504, Isabella I of Castile died, and although Ferdinand II of Aragon tried to maintain his position over Castile in the wake of her death, the Castilian Cortes Generales (the royal court of Spain) chose to crown Isabella's daughter Joanna of Castile as queen. Her husband, Philip I of Castile, was the Habsburg son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy. Shortly thereafter Joanna began to lapse into insanity, although the extent of her mental illness was the topic of some debate. In 1506, Philip I was declared "jure uxoris" king, but he died later that year under mysterious circumstances, possibly poisoned by his father-in-law, Ferdinand II. Since their oldest son Charles was only six, the Cortes reluctantly allowed Joanna's father Ferdinand II to rule the country as the regent of Queen Joanna and Charles.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain was now in personal union under Ferdinand II of Aragon. As undisputed ruler in most of the Peninsula, Ferdinand adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, going on to crystallize his long-running designs over Navarre into a full-blown invasion led initially by a Castilian military expedition, and supported later by Aragonese troops (1512). He also attempted to enlarge Spain's sphere of influence in Italy, strengthening it against France. As ruler of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and the Republic of Venice for control of Italy; these conflicts became the center of Ferdinand's foreign policy as king. Ferdinand's first investment of Spanish forces came in the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice, where the Spanish soldiers distinguished themselves on the field alongside their French allies at the Battle of Agnadello (1509). Only a year later, Ferdinand joined the Holy League against France, seeing a chance at taking both Naples—to which he held a dynastic claim—and Navarre, which was claimed through his marriage to Germaine of Foix. The war was less of a success than that against Venice, and in 1516 France agreed to a truce that left Milan under French control and recognized Spanish hegemony in northern Navarre. Ferdinand would die later that year.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Ferdinand's death led to the ascension of young Charles to the throne as Charles I of Castile and Aragon, effectively founding the monarchy of Spain. His Spanish inheritance included all the Spanish possessions in the New World and around the Mediterranean. Upon the death of his Habsburg father in 1506, Charles had inherited the Netherlands and Franche-Comté, growing up in Flanders. In 1519, with the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian I, Charles inherited the Habsburg territories in Germany, and was duly elected as Holy Roman Emperor that year. His mother Joanna remained titular queen of Castile until her death in 1555, but due to her mental health and worries of her being proposed as an alternative monarch by opposition (as happened in the Revolt of the Comuneros), Charles kept her imprisoned.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: At that point, Emperor and King Charles was the most powerful man in Christendom. The accumulation of so much power by one man and one dynasty greatly concerned Francis I of France, who found himself surrounded by Habsburg territories. In 1521 Francis invaded the Spanish possessions in Italy and Navarre, which inaugurated a second round of Franco-Spanish conflict. The war was a disaster for France, which suffered defeats at Biccoca (1522), Pavia (1525, at which Francis was captured), and Landriano (1529) before Francis relented and abandoned Milan to Spain once more. Spain's overseas possessions in the New World were based in the Caribbean and the Spanish Main and consisted of a rapidly decreasing indigenous population, few resources of value to the crown, and a sparse Spanish settler population. The situation changed dramatically with the expedition of Hernán Cortés, who, with alliances with city-states hostile to the Aztecs and thousands of indigenous Mexican warriors, conquered the Aztec Empire in 1521. Following the pattern established in Spain during the Reconquista and in the Caribbean, the first European settlements in the Americas, conquerors divided up the indigenous population in private holdings "encomiendas" and exploited their labor. With Americas colonization, Spain gave vast new indigenous populations to convert to Christianity and rule as vassals of the crown. Charles established the Council of the Indies in 1524 to oversee all of Castile's overseas possessions. Charles appointed a viceroy in Mexico in 1535, capping the royal governance of the high court, "Real Audiencia", and treasury officials with the highest royal official. Officials were under the jurisdiction of the Council of the Indies. Charles promulgated the New Laws of 1542 to limit the power of the conqueror group to form a hereditary aristocracy that might challenge the power of the crown.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Charles's victory at the Battle of Pavia (1525) surprised many Italians and Germans and elicited concerns that Charles would endeavor to gain even greater power. Pope Clement VII switched sides and now joined forces with France and prominent Italian states against the Habsburg Emperor, in the War of the League of Cognac. In 1527, due to Charles' inability to pay them sufficiently, his armies in Northern Italy mutinied and sacked Rome itself for loot, forcing Clement, and succeeding popes, to be considerably more prudent in their dealings with secular authorities: in 1533, Clement's refusal to annul Henry VIII of England's marriage to Catherine of Aragon (Charles' aunt) was a direct consequence of his unwillingness to offend the emperor and perhaps have his capital sacked a second time. The Peace of Barcelona, signed between Charles and the pope in 1529, established a more cordial relationship between the two leaders that effectively named Spain as the protector of the Catholic cause and recognized Charles as king of Lombardy in return for Spanish intervention in overthrowing the rebellious Florentine Republic.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The Protestant Reformation had begun in Germany in 1517. Charles, through his position as Holy Roman Emperor, his important holdings along Germany's frontiers, and his close relationship with his Habsburg relatives in Austria, had a vested interest in maintaining the stability of the Holy Roman Empire. The German Peasants' War broke out in Germany in 1524 and ravaged the country until it was brutally put down in 1526; Charles, even as far away from Germany as he was, was committed to keeping order. After the Peasants' War the Protestants organized themselves into a defensive league to protect themselves from Emperor Charles. Under the protection of the Schmalkaldic League, the Protestant states committed a number of outrages in the eyes of the Catholic Church— the confiscation of some ecclesiastical territories, among other things— and defied the authority of the Emperor.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1543, Francis I, king of France, announced his unprecedented alliance with the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, by occupying the Spanish-controlled city of Nice in cooperation with Turkish forces. Henry VIII of England, who bore a greater grudge against France than he held against the Emperor for standing in the way of his divorce, joined Charles in his invasion of France. Although the Spanish army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Ceresole, in Savoy Henry fared better, and France was forced to accept terms. The Austrians, led by Charles's younger brother Ferdinand, continued to fight the Ottomans in the east. With France defeated, Charles went to take care of an older problem: the Schmalkaldic League.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Perhaps more important to the strategy of the Spanish king, the League had allied itself with the French, and efforts in Germany to undermine the League had been rebuffed. Francis's defeat in 1544 led to the annulment of the alliance with the Protestants, and Charles took advantage of the opportunity. He first tried the path of negotiation at the Council of Trent in 1545, but the Protestant leadership, feeling betrayed by the stance taken by the Catholics at the council, went to war, led by the Saxon elector Maurice. In response, Charles invaded Germany at the head of a mixed Dutch-Spanish army, hoping to restore the Imperial authority. The Emperor personally inflicted a decisive defeat on the Protestants at the historic Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. In 1555, Charles signed the Peace of Augsburg with the Protestant states and restored stability in Germany on his principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" ("whose realm, his religion"). Charles's involvement in Germany would establish a role for Spain as protector of the Catholic Habsburg cause in the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1526, Charles married Infanta Isabella, the sister of John III of Portugal. In 1556 he abdicated from his positions, giving his Spanish empire to his only surviving son, Philip II of Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire to his brother, Ferdinand. Charles retired to the monastery of Yuste (Extremadura, Spain), and died in 1558.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain was not yet at peace, as the aggressive Henry II of France came to the throne in 1547 and renewed the conflict with Spain. Charles' successor, Philip II, aggressively conducted the war against France, crushing a French army at the Battle of St. Quentin in Picardy in 1557 and defeating Henry again at the Battle of Gravelines the following year. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy. In the celebrations that followed the treaty, Henry was killed by a stray splinter from a lance. France was stricken for the next thirty years by civil war and unrest (see French Wars of Religion) and was unable to effectively compete with Spain and the Habsburgs in the European power struggle. Freed from any serious French opposition, Spain saw the height of its might and territorial reach in the period 1559–1643.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The Spanish Empire had grown substantially since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Aztec and Inca Empires were conquered during Charles' reign, from 1519 to 1521 and 1540 to 1558, respectively. Spanish settlements were established in the New World: Mexico City, the most important colonial city established in 1524 to be the primary center of administration in the New World; Florida, colonized in the 1560s; Buenos Aires, established in 1536; and New Granada (modern Colombia), colonized in the 1530s. The Spanish Empire abroad became the source of Spanish wealth and power in Europe. But as precious metal shipments rapidly expanded late in the century it contributed to the general inflation that was affecting the whole of Europe. Instead of fueling the Spanish economy, American silver made the country increasingly dependent on foreign sources of raw materials and manufactured goods. In 1557, Spain met with bankruptcy and was forced to partially repudiate its debt through debt consolidation and conversion.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The Peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559 concluded the war with France, leaving Spain at a considerable advantage. However, the government was in enormous debt and declared bankruptcy that year. Most of the government's revenues came from taxes and excise duties, not imported silver and other goods. The Ottoman Empire had long menaced the fringes of the Habsburg dominions in Austria and northwest Africa, and in response Ferdinand and Isabella had sent expeditions to North Africa, capturing Melilla in 1497 and Oran in 1509. Charles had preferred to combat the Ottomans through a considerably more maritime strategy, hampering Ottoman landings on the Venetian territories in the Eastern Mediterranean. Only in response to raids on the eastern coast of Spain did Charles personally lead attacks against holdings in North Africa (1545). In 1560, the Ottomans battled the Spanish navy off the coast of Tunisia, but in 1565 Ottoman troops landing on the strategically vital island of Malta, defended by the Knights of St. John, were defeated. The death of Suleiman the Magnificent the following year and his succession by Selim the Sot emboldened Philip, who resolved to carry the war to the Ottoman homelands. In 1571, a mixed naval expedition of Spanish, Venetian, and papal ships led by Charles' illegitimate son Don John of Austria annihilated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, in the largest naval battle fought in European waters since Actium in 31 BC. The fleet included Miguel de Cervantes, future author of the historic Spanish novel Don Quixote. The victory curbed the Ottoman naval threat against European territory, particularly in the western Mediterranean, and the loss of experienced sailors was to be a major handicap in facing Christian fleets. Yet the Turks succeeded in rebuilding their navy in a year, using it handily to consolidate Ottoman dominance over most of the Mediterranean's African coast and eastern islands. Philip lacked the resources to fight both the Netherlands and the Ottoman Empire at the same time, and the stalemate in the Mediterranean continued until Spain agreed to a truce in 1580.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The time for rejoicing in Madrid was short-lived. In 1566, Calvinist-led riots in the Spanish Netherlands (roughly equal to modern-day Netherlands and Belgium, inherited by Philip from Charles and his Burgundian forebearers) prompted the Duke of Alva to conduct a military expedition to restore order. Alva launched an ensuing reign of terror. In 1568, William the Silent led a failed attempt to drive Alva from the Netherlands. This attempt is generally considered to signal the start of the Eighty Years' War that ended with the independence of the United Provinces. The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces. In 1572, a band of rebel Dutch privateers known as the "watergeuzen" ("Sea Beggars") seized a number of Dutch coastal towns, proclaimed their support for William and denounced the Spanish leadership.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1574, the Spanish army under Luis de Requeséns was repulsed from the Siege of Leiden after the Dutch destroyed the dykes that held back the North Sea from the low-lying provinces. In 1576, faced with the costs of his 80,000-man army of occupation in the Netherlands and the massive fleet that had won at Lepanto, Philip was forced to accept bankruptcy. The army in the Netherlands mutinied not long after, seizing Antwerp and looting the southern Netherlands, prompting several cities in the previously peaceful southern provinces to join the rebellion. The Spanish chose the route of negotiation, and pacified most of the southern provinces again with the Union of Arras in 1579.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The Arras agreement required all Spanish troops to leave these lands. Meanwhile, Philip had his eye on uniting the entire Iberian Peninsula under his rule, a traditional objective of Spanish monarchs. The opportunity came in 1578 when the Portuguese king Sebastian launched a crusade against Morocco. The expedition ended in disaster and Sebastian's disappearance at the Battle of the Three Kings. His aged uncle Henry ruled until he died in 1580. Although Philip had long prepared for the takeover of Portugal, he still found it necessary to launch a military occupation led by the Duke of Alva. Philip took the title of King of Portugal, but otherwise the country remained autonomous, retaining its own laws, currency, and institutions. However, Portugal surrendered all independence in foreign policy, and relations between the two countries were never warm.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: France formed the cornerstone of Spanish foreign policy. For 30 years after Cateau-Cambresis, it was engulfed in civil wars. After 1590, the Spanish intervened directly in France, winning battles, but failing to prevent Henry of Navarre from becoming king as Henry IV. To Spain's dismay, Pope Clement VIII accepted Henry back into the Catholic Church.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: To keep the Netherlands under control required an extensive occupation force, and Spain was still financially strapped since the 1576 bankruptcy. In 1584, William the Silent was assassinated by a Catholic, and the death of the popular Dutch resistance leader was expected to bring an end to the war; it did not. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I of England, supported the Protestant cause in the Netherlands and France, and Sir Francis Drake launched attacks against Spanish merchants in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, along with a particularly aggressive attack on the port of Cádiz. Philip sent the Spanish Armada to attack England. Numbering 130 ships and 30,000 men, it was led by the Duke of Medina-Sidona. The Armada's goal was to ferry Spanish troops from the Netherlands to invade England. After three days of fighting with the English fleet, the Armada withdrew and was forced to make the journey around the coast of Scotland and Ireland, many ships being wrecked by storms.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain had invested itself in the religious warfare in France after Henry II's death. In 1589, Henry III, the last of the Valois lineage, died at the walls of Paris. His successor, Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon king of France, was a man of great ability, winning key victories against the Catholic League at Arques (1589) and Ivry (1590). Committed to stopping Henry from becoming King of France, the Spanish divided their army in the Netherlands and invaded France in 1590.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Faced with wars against England, France, and the Netherlands, the Spanish government found that neither the New World silver nor steadily increasing taxes were enough to cover their expenses, and went bankrupt again in 1596. To bring finances into order, military campaigns were reduced and the over-stretched forces went into a largely defensive mode. In 1598, shortly before his death, Philip II made peace with France, withdrawing his forces from French territory and stopping payments to the Catholic League after accepting the new convert to Catholicism, Henry IV, as the rightful French king. Meanwhile, Castile was ravaged by a plague that had arrived by ship from the north, losing half a million people. Yet as the 17th century began, and despite her travails, Spain was still unquestionably the dominant power.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The first years of his reign, "from 1556 to 1566, Philip II was concerned principally with Muslim allies of the Turks, based in Tripoli and Algiers, the bases from which North African [Muslim] forces under the corsair Dragut preyed upon Christian shipping." In 1560, a Spanish-led Christian fleet was sent to recapture Tripoli (captured by Spain in 1510), but the fleet was destroyed by the Ottomans at the Battle of Djerba. The Ottomans attempted to seize the Spanish military-bases of Oran and Mers El Kébir on the North African coast in 1563, but were repulsed. In 1565, the Ottomans sent a large expedition to Malta, which laid siege to several forts on the island. A Spanish relief force from Sicily drove the Ottomans (exhausted from a long siege) away from the island. The death of Suleiman the Magnificent the following year and his succession by his less capable son Selim the Sot emboldened Philip, who resolved to carry the war to the sultan himself.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1571, a Christian fleet, led by Philip's half-brother John of Austria, annihilated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in the waters off southwestern Greece. Despite the significant victory, however, the Holy League's disunity prevented the victors from capitalizing on their triumph. Plans to seize the Dardanelles as a step towards recovering Constantinople for Christendom, were ruined by bickering amongst the allies. With a massive effort, the Ottoman Empire rebuilt its navy. Within six months a new fleet was able to reassert Ottoman naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. John captured Tunis (in present-day Tunisia) from the Ottomans in 1573, but it was soon lost again. The Ottoman sultan agreed to a truce in the Mediterranean with Philip in 1580. In the western Mediterranean, Philip pursued a defensive policy with the construction of a series of military forts (presidios) and peace agreements with some of the Muslim rulers of North Africa.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In the first half of the 17th century, Spanish ships attacked the Anatolian coast, defeating larger Ottoman fleets at the Battle of Cape Celidonia and the Battle of Cape Corvo. Larache and La Mamora, on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, and the island of Alhucemas, in the Mediterranean, were taken, but during the second half of the 17th century, Larache and La Mamora were also lost.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Philip led Spain into the final phase of the Italian Wars, crushing a French army at the Battle of St. Quentin in Picardy in 1558 and defeating the French again at the Battle of Gravelines. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy. France was stricken for the next thirty years by chronic civil war and unrest and, during this period, removed it from effectively competing with Spain and the Habsburg family in European power games. Freed from effective French opposition, Spain attained the apogee of its might and territorial reach in the period 1559–1643.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In 1566, Calvinist-led riots in the Netherlands prompted the Duke of Alba to march into Brussels at the head of a large army to restore order. In 1568, William of Orange, a German nobleman, led a failed attempt to drive Alba from the Netherlands. The Battle of Rheindalen is often seen as the unofficial start of the Eighty Years' War that led to the separation of the northern and southern Netherlands and to the formation of the United Provinces. The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces. During the initial phase of the war, the revolt was largely unsuccessful. Spain regained control over most of the rebelling provinces. This period is known as the "Spanish Fury" due to the high number of massacres, instances of mass looting, and total destruction of multiple cities between 1572 and 1579.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: In January 1579, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zeeland formed the United Provinces which became the Dutch Netherlands of today. Meanwhile, Spain sent Alessandro Farnese with 20,000 well-trained troops into the Netherlands. Groningen, Breda, Campen, Dunkirk, Antwerp, and Brussels, among others, were put to siege. Farnese eventually secured the Southern provinces for Spain. After the Spanish capture of Maastricht in 1579, the Dutch began to turn on William of Orange. William was assassinated by a supporter of Philip in 1584.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: After the fall of Antwerp, the Queen of England began to aid the Northern provinces and sent troops there in 1585. English forces under the Earl of Leicester and then Lord Willoughby faced the Spanish in the Netherlands under Farnese in a series of largely indecisive actions that tied down significant numbers of Spanish troops and bought time for the Dutch to reorganize their defenses. The Spanish Armada suffered defeat at the hands of the English in 1588 and the situation in the Netherlands became increasingly difficult to manage. Maurice of Nassau, William's son, recaptured Deventer, Groningen, Nijmegen and Zutphen. The Spanish were on the defensive, mainly because they had wasted too much resources on the attempted invasion of England and on expeditions in northern France. In 1595, King Henry IV of France declared war on Spain, further reducing Spain's ability to launch offensive warfare on the United Provinces. Philip had been forced to declare bankruptcy in 1557, 1560, 1576, and 1596. However, by regaining control of the sea, Spain was able to greatly increase the supply of gold and silver from America, which allowed it to increase military pressure on England and France.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Under financial and military pressure, in 1598 Philip ceded the Spanish Netherlands to his daughter Isabella, following the conclusion of the Treaty of Vervins with France.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Under Philip II, royal power over the Indies increased, but the crown knew little about its overseas possessions in the Indies. Although the Council of the Indies was tasked with oversight there, it acted without advice of high officials with direct colonial experience. Another serious problem was that the crown did not know what Spanish laws were in force there. To remedy the situation, Philip appointed Juan de Ovando, who was named president of the council, to give advice. Ovando appointed a "chronicler and cosmographer of the Indies", Juan López de Velasco, to gather information about the crown's holdings, which resulted in the Relaciones geográficas in the 1580s.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The crown sought greater control over encomenderos, who had attempted to establish themselves as a local aristocracy; strengthened the power of the ecclesiastical hierarchy; shored up religious orthodoxy by the establishment of the Inquisition in Lima and Mexico City (1571); and increased revenues from silver mines in Peru and in Mexico, discovered in the 1540s. Particularly important was the crown's appointment of two able viceroys, Don Francisco de Toledo as viceroy of Peru (r. 1569–1581), and in Mexico, Don Martín Enríquez (r. 1568–1580), who was subsequently appointed viceroy to replace Toledo in Peru. In Peru, after decades of political unrest, with ineffective viceroys and encomenderos wielding undue power, weak royal institutions, a renegade Inca state existing in Vilcabamba, and waning revenue from the silver mine of Potosí, Toledo's appointment was a major step forward for royal control. He built on reforms attempted under earlier viceroys, but he is often credited with a major transformation in crown rule in Peru. Toledo formalized the labor draft of Andean commoners, the mita, to guarantee a labor supply for both the silver mine at Potosí and the mercury mine at Huancavelica. He established administrative districts of "corregimiento", and resettled native Andeans in reducciones to better rule them. Under Toledo, the last stronghold of the Inca state was destroyed and the last Inca emperor, Tupac Amaru I, was executed. Silver from Potosí flowed to coffers in Spain and paid for Spain's wars in Europe. In Mexico, Viceroy Enríquez organized the defense of the northern frontier against nomadic and bellicose indigenous groups, who attacked the transport lines of silver from the northern mines. In the religious sphere, the crown sought to bring the power of the religious orders under control with the "Ordenanza del Patronazgo", ordering friars to give up their Indian parishes and turn them over to the diocesan clergy, who were more closely controlled by the crown.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The Spanish Inquisition expanded to the Indies in 1565 and was in place by 1570 in Lima and Mexico City. It drew many colonial Spaniards into torture chambers. Native Americans were exempt.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: The crown expanded its global claims and defended existing ones in the Indies. Transpacific explorations had resulted in Spain claiming the Philippines and the establishment of Spanish settlements and trade with Mexico. The viceroyalty of Mexico was given jurisdiction over the Philippines, which became the entrepôt for Asian trade. Philip's succession to the crown of Portugal in 1580 complicated the situation on the ground in the Indies between Spanish and Portuguese settlers, although Brazil and Spanish America were administered through separate councils in Spain.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spain dealt with English encroachment on Spain's maritime control in the Indies, particularly by Sir Francis Drake and his cousin John Hawkins. In 1568, the Spanish defeated Hawkins' fleet at the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa in present-day Mexico. In 1585, Drake sailed for the West Indies and sacked Santo Domingo, captured Cartagena de Indias, and St. Augustine in Florida. Both Drake and Hawkins died of disease during the disastrous 1595–96 expedition against Puerto Rico (Battle of San Juan), Panama, and other targets in the Spanish Main, a severe setback in which the English suffered heavy losses in men and ships.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: With the conquest and settlement of the Philippines, the Spanish Empire reached its greatest extent. In 1564, Miguel López de Legazpi was commissioned by the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Don Luís de Velasco, to lead an expedition in the Pacific Ocean to find the Spice Islands, where earlier explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Ruy López de Villalobos had landed in 1521 and 1543, respectively. The westward sailing to reach the sources of spices continued to be a necessity with the Ottomans still controlled major choke points in central Asia. It was unclear how the agreement between Spain and Portugal dividing the Atlantic world affected finds on the other side of the Pacific. Spain had ceded its rights to the "Spice Islands" to Portugal in the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529, but the appellation was vague as was their exact delineation. The Legazpi expedition was ordered by King Philip II, after whom the Philippines had earlier been named by Ruy López de Villalobos, when Philip was heir to the throne. The king stated that "the main purpose of this expedition is to establish the return route from the western isles, since it is already known that the route to them is fairly short." The viceroy died in July 1564, but the Audiencia and López de Legazpi completed the preparations for the expedition. On embarking on the expedition, Spain lacked maps or information to guide the king's decision to authorize the expedition. That realization subsequently led to the creation of reports from the various regions of the empire, the relaciones geográficas. The Philippines came under the jurisdiction of the viceroyalty of Mexico, and once the Manila Galleon sailings between Manila and Acapulco were established, Mexico became the Philippines' link to the larger Spanish Empire.


title: Habsburg Spain

text: Spanish colonization began in earnest when López de Legazpi arrived from Mexico in 1565 and formed the first settlements in Cebu. Beginning with just five ships and five hundred men accompanied by Augustinian friars, and further strengthened in 1567 by two hundred soldiers, he was able to repel the Portuguese and create the foundations for the colonization of the archipelago. In 1571, the Spanish, their Mexican recruits and their Filipino (Visayan) allies attacked and occupied Maynila, a vassal-state of the Sultanate of Brunei, and negotiated the incorporation of the Kingdom of Tondo which was liberated from the Bruneian Sultanate's control and of whom, their princess, Gandarapa, had a tragic romance with the Mexican-born Conquistador and grandson of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, Juan de Salcedo. The combined Spanish-Mexican-Filipino forces also built a Christian walled city over the burnt ruins of Muslim Maynila and made it as the new capital of the Spanish East Indies and renamed it Manila. Spaniards were few and life was difficult and they were often outnumbered by their Amerindian recruits and Filipino allies. They attempted to mobilize subordinated populations through the encomienda. Unlike in the Caribbean where the indigenous populations rapidly disappeared, the indigenous populations continued to be robust in the Philippines. One Spaniard described the climate as "cuatro meses de polvo, cuatro meses de lodo, y cuatro meses de todo" (four months of dust, four months of mud, and four months of everything).