AV1
The open, royalty-free codec backed by Google, Netflix, Amazon and Apple. The same picture at much lower bitrate than H.264, in exchange for heavier encoding.
AV1 is an open, royalty-free video codec. For the same visual quality it needs about 40% less data than H.264, which cuts delivery traffic. The cost is slower encoding and no hardware decoding on older devices.
What is AV1?
AV1 (AOMedia Video 1) is a video compression format published in 2018 by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium founded by Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, Cisco and Intel that Apple later joined. The goal was a codec as efficient as the best on the market, without the patent fees that make H.264 and especially H.265 expensive.
For streaming the benefit is direct. With less bitrateBitrateThe amount of data used per second of video. Higher bitrate means more detail and a larger file; the core lever behind streaming quality.Open definition → for the same picture, each viewer downloads less, playback holds up better on slow connections, and the delivery bill drops if you pay per gigabyte.
AV1 vs H.264 vs H.265
| H.264 (AVC) | H.265 (HEVC) | AV1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2003 | 2013 | 2018 |
| Bitrate for the same quality | Baseline | Up to half | About 40% less than H.264 |
| Licensing | Patent licensing | Several patent pools | Royalty-free |
| Browsers | All | Mostly Safari | Chrome, Edge, Firefox; Safari with hardware support |
| Encoding cost | Low | Medium | High |
The saving grows with resolution: at 4K4K (2160p)Ultra HD at 3840×2160 — four times the pixels of Full HD, and the point where codec choice starts paying for itself.Open definition → the gap to H.264 is larger than at 720p.
Pros and cons
Less data for the same picture: less bufferingBufferingWhen playback pauses to load more data. ABR exists largely to prevent it by stepping quality down before the buffer empties.Open definition → on slow networks and lower CDNCDN (Content Delivery Network)A global network of edge servers that caches video close to viewers, cutting latency and absorbing traffic spikes.Open definition → delivery cost.
Anyone can implement it without paying licences, which is why browsers and large services adopted it.
Encoding AV1 takes more time and compute than H.264. For video on demand you pay once and it pays back on every view.
Recent devices decode it in hardware; older ones need an H.264 version as a fallback.
When to use AV1
AV1 pays off the more a video is watched: courses, on-demand catalogues, high-resolution content, or audiences on slow connections and expensive mobile data. Because not every device plays it, the usual practice is to offer it alongside H.264 and let the player pick the version the device supports.
Further reading
- Alliance for Open Media — AV1 — the official specification.
