AV1 Video codec
Part 1. What Is AV1 Codec and Its Background?
AV1 is the latest video codec launched by the Alliance for the Open Media (AOM). It was first issued on March 28, 2018.
The original validated version (1.0.0) was released on June 25, 2018, and their pace of development is lightning fast. Several versions have been released, and some of the infamous issues in the early versions have been significantly fixed.
By 2021, with just 3 years of research and development, the AV1 codec has become quite usable with a number of exciting features. Many believe that the AV1 codec is likely to dominate the streaming market.
Why and how is the new codec evolving so agilely?
The AOM was the man behind the curtain. Founded in September 2015, AOM was founded by leading companies such as Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft, as well as hardware vendors such as AMD, ARM Intel and NVIDIA. In addition, Amazon and Netflix have jointly born the AV1 codec.
With all the big names, AV1 has adapted Google’s previous VP9 technology and received as much support as possible from members of the Google AOM Alliance, making AV1 look promising to become the new standard in the world of content.
Part 2. What're the Main Advantages of AV1 Codec?
1. Royalty Free and Open Source. The most striking point of AV1 is the open and royalty-free strategy.
It has become a contentious issue and has shattered the ambition that AOM wants to penetrate the market share of the HEVC codec released by MPEG-LA in 2013.
Why should AOM take such aggressive action against HEVC? There are also technical and market concerns.
MPEG-LA has dominated the video codec standard for decades.
A capable competitor only appeared in 2010 when Google VP8 joined the game. Founded in 1988, MPEG LA has amassed a huge number of video codec patents with a huge patent pool.
It should be recalled that their patent fees are almost insane.
A one gigabyte video in h264 format converted to AV1 will be approx 150 mb only, so we can store way more content on the server.
Here you can see exactly what browsers it supports and what version you need to look for.
Source:
AV1 Video Codec: What Is AV1, Pros and Cons of AV1 vs HEVC and VVC (winxdvd.com)