The Alliance for Open Media has finally launched its long-awaited AV2 codec, which is the successor to the popular AV1 standard that’s used by Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services.
According to AOMedia, the AV2 standard delivers video compression efficiency gains of approximately 30% for 4K, 8K and virtual reality content.
However, we may not want to get too excited. While a few major streaming services have embraced AV1, it’s still not that widely supported, despite being launched way back in 2018, and there’s no guarantee that AV2 is going to change the minds of holdouts.
“The innovation behind this new video codec is thanks to the tireless work by phenomenal engineers at AOM's over 50 member organizations," said Roshan Baliga, Group Product Manager at Google, on behalf of AOMedia.
Like AV1, the AV2 codec is fully open-source and royalty free. The project is a collaboration between dozens of technology companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Intel, Netflix, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung and many others, who are all members of AOMedia. . The organisation claims that its tests show that AV2 is 30% more effective at video compression than the AV1 codec, although these results have not yet been confirmed by third parties. We don’t yet have any comparative data regarding its performance in comparison to the competing HEVC or VCC codecs, so far.
The improvements suggest that users will be able to receive the same picture quality from streaming platforms such as Netflix with 30% less bandwidth. In addition, streamers will be able to deliver superior picture quality at the same bitrate, or else try to strike more of a balance down the middle. According to AOMedia, the new codec supports SD, HD, 4K, 8K, 3D, VR and augmented reality content.
It’s worth pointing out that the alliance will likely continue to make optimisations to the codec going forward to try and further enhance picture quality, speed and efficiency, similar to what they’ve been doing for AV1.
The improved efficiency of AV2 is enabled by updates including the introduction of larger superblocks – 256x256, as opposed to 128x128 in AV1. The codec also comes with smarter partitioning and improved prediction capabilities, but it doesn’t take advantage of any new AI or machine learning techniques. The full AV2 v1.0.0 specification is available here.
One difference between AV2 and AV1 is that we do expect to see a much faster rollout of the newer standard. When AV1 debuted back in 2018, its main competitor HEVC had already been widely adopted by streaming services for HDR and 4K content and also on UHD Blu-ray.
HEVC’s successor, VVC, was rolled out in mid-2020, but six years on from its debut, it has hardly been adopted by anyone. HEVC continues to be the default codec for anyone that hasn’t switched to AV1. It’s expected that AV2 will do much better in comparison, given the huge number of companies involved in its development. Some of those companies also play a role in implementation, such as ensuring the necessary hardware support across silicon chips, smart TVs, PCs, web browsers, media players and streaming platforms. Given their efforts in developing the codec, they’ll likely want to push its adoption as soon as possible. However, the HEVC codec still provides stiff competition.
Most smart TVs support the AV1 standard now, but they’re not compatible with AV2. It’s likely that we’ll have to wait until next year, or more probably 2028, before we start seeing TVs and such that can support the new codec. In the meantime, streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube will use both codecs, sending AV1 content to older devices and AV2 streams when they recognize a device capable of supporting it.
Netflix was one of the earliest adopters of AV1 when it began using it in 2020, although only around 30% of its content is streamed through the standard, with HEVC accounting for the rest. YouTube adopted it even earlier, back in 2018, but AOMedia hasn’t had much luck convincing others to embrace it.
Amazon Primed Video has reportedly been testing AV1, but the likes of Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ remain steadfast in their use of HEVC.
