What is AV 1?
The AV 1 codec will be the first video codec released by AOM. Its positioning is to replace Google's VP9 and compete with the current HEVC standard. Although we can only know the performance of the codec when AV 1 is officially launched, the strong support of AOM gives AV 1 a huge competitive advantage. This can ensure the timely deployment of AV 1 in browsers, mobile devices, OTT and smart TVs, and rapidly increase the distribution of AV 1 encoded content in YouTube, Netflix and Amazon. Of course, AV 1 also faces challenges. First of all, HEVC has many years of leading edge in hardware deployment, and the development of AV 1 without infringing the patents of video-related IP owners such as H.264 and HEVC has also been questioned by authoritative experts. Although the initial implementation of AV 1 will absorb some features of Daala and Thor, most of its code comes from VP 10. Compared with VP9/HEVC, the goal of AOM is to improve the compression performance of AV 1 by 50%, allowing a reasonable increase in the complexity of encoding and playback. AV 1 is mainly used for UHD video (including higher bit rate, wider color gamut and higher frame rate), and can play 4K 60fps video on the browser of a fairly fast computer. The basic codec will support 10bit and 12bit encoding like the color space of BT.2020 In addition, AV 1 will be WebRTC (real-time communication). Once AV 1 is available, YouTube hopes to convert the video codec to AV 1 as soon as possible, especially for UHD, HDR and high frame rate videos, because their codecs need to achieve more significant bandwidth savings than VP9.