AV1: Helping to meet growing expectations for higher-quality streaming

It’s no secret that video is a powerful communication tool and video streaming has become an increasingly dominant way for global audiences to stay informed and entertained. Video’s appeal and reach are massive, with estimates suggesting that more than three billion internet users either watched or downloaded video at least once per month last year. Additionally, videos were reported to have a 92% global internet audience reach as of Q3 2023.

As video consumption continues to grow, so do consumers’ expectations. The brilliant images promised by Ultra High Definition (UHD) video and beyond have helped heighten viewers’ demands for crisp, clear quality across all screens, not only for recorded video but for streaming live sports and events, video conferencing, and more.

For providers, the technical hurdles and data demands of higher quality video are immense. Several different video codecs exist to aid with the compression and decompression of digital video. These codecs shrink video file sizes to facilitate improved storage and distribution of video, then decompress them so they can be viewed. Options like H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), among others, offer different features and benefits. However, a newer codec option, AV1, is gaining market share, and thanks to a few recent developments is set to become one of the industry’s dominant codec options to meet consumers’ ever-growing video-streaming demands.

AV1 for the internet era

Released in 2018, AV1 delivers cross-platform video enabling 4K UHD experiences – while lowering data usage. It was developed to be royalty-free and for the internet era, enabling more screens to display vivid images, deep colours, bright highlights, dark shadows, and other enhanced features that viewers have become accustomed to. According to independent user tests, AV1 can deliver 4K UHD video at an average of 30% greater compression over competing codecs.

Since its release, AV1 has enjoyed significant adoption across the industry and has already proven its value. For example, in a 2023 blog, social media giant Meta noted that it believes “AV1 will be the most viable codec” for the company in the coming few years. The article also notes that AV1 “delivers about 30% better coding efficiency than VP9 and HEVC — allowing people who use (Meta) apps to enjoy high-quality video at much lower bandwidth, and enabling (Meta) to maximize storage efficiency and reduce egress traffic, CDN prefetching/caching, and network congestion. AV1 also has a much richer feature set than other video coding standards and can support most of Meta’s typical production usages.” The company has seen measurable video quality improvements on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger since adopting AV1 in its delivery pipelines.

The Apple bump

On top of existing enthusiasm, two recent events have helped supercharge AV1’s adoption even more and will pave the way for the codec to become increasingly dominant. First, in late 2023, Apple announced support for AV1, giving the codec a boost. According to Mickael Raulet, CTO of compression solution provider Ateme: “Apple’s support means the whole ecosystem now stands behind AV1. With Apple’s adoption, we can expect to see a massive shift in support of AV1.”

Android and dav1d

In addition to Apple’s hardware support of the codec, another key tipping point for AV1 was Android’s integration of dav1d, VideoLAN’s AV1 decoder, which is likely to increase the use of AV1 on mobile devices. A common misconception has been that AV1 was not suitable for older or non-premium devices, but dav1d helps address that. Matt Frost, Director of Product Management at Google, explained: “dav1d is designed to run efficiently on the CPUs of most mobile phones, allowing them to decode AV1. This means that services such as YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix can now offer AV1 playback on devices without dedicated hardware.”

Frost expects adoption of dedicated AV1 hardware decoders to continue. “Typically, chip makers add new features, like dedicated video decoders, to their more expensive products first. Over time, those features trickle down to their less expensive chips that power lower-cost devices,” he adds. Beyond that, Frost sees the continued adoption of AV1 by smaller and smaller companies.

Democratisation

Beyond the big players that represent the majority of AV1 adoption in the current environment, more and more companies are starting to take note and ask for it as well, and this is a trend that is likely to continue.

Andy Francis, Technical Content Lead at Bitmovin, a multimedia technology company that transcodes digital video and audio to streaming formats, agrees. “As far as public communications around AV1, mainly you see things from Netflix, YouTube, and Meta, so I think that’s created a certain perception that it’s only feasible if you’re working on that scale,” said Francis. “Things have changed, however. Now, even with a few thousand views, companies can save money over time. This technological advancement has made high-quality encoding accessible and financially viable for medium and smaller-scale companies, debunking the myth that it is only suitable for large-scale projects.”

A bright future

Without a doubt, AV1 has already had an impact on the video streaming industry, with wide adoption by the biggest names in the space. The codec now has full ecosystem support from the biggest players, which helps create an environment where more and more smaller companies can embrace the codec as well. Additionally, the advent of the dav1d decoder has made it more feasible to use AV1 on lower-end devices, especially at lower bit rates, laying to rest the criticism about AV1’s limitations with this tier of technology.

The demand for video is not going away anytime soon. With viewership continuing to rise and the global video streaming market expected to reach $184.3bn by 2027, providers need to embrace technology that helps them deliver high-quality video but at lower bitrates and cost. AV1 has already proven itself in the industry, and, with a boost from some key recent developments, is now poised to become increasingly dominant and help pave the way for the future of video consumption.

Read more AV1 ‘Gaining Ground’ in the Codec Wars