AV1 Codec: What It Is, How It Works, and When to Use It

The AV1 codec delivers up to 50% better compression than H.264 at the same visual quality — without any licensing fees. For developers building video streaming applications, that means lower bandwidth costs, better image quality at the same bitrate, and no patent royalties to worry about.

AV1 is now the codec of choice at YouTube, Netflix, and most major streaming platforms. YouTube encodes more than 75% of its video library in AV1. Netflix reported in December 2025 that 30% of their streams use AV1. The codec has crossed from “emerging technology” into mainstream production deployment.

This guide covers what the AV1 codec is, how its compression actually works under the hood, how it stacks up against H.264, H.265, and VP9, what hardware and browser support looks like today, and how to decide when AV1 makes sense for your project. If you’re newer to codecs in general, our video codec overview is a good starting point.

What Is the AV1 Codec?

The AV1 codec is an open-source, royalty-free video coding format designed for efficient internet video transmission. AV1 stands for AOMedia Video 1 and was developed by the Alliance for Open Media — a consortium that includes Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Intel, and ARM.

AV1 was released in 2018 as the successor to VP9. It was specifically designed to address two problems with existing codecs:

1. Licensing cost: H.264 and H.265 require royalty payments managed by patent pools. This adds real cost at scale and creates legal complexity for open-source developers and browser vendors.
2. Compression efficiency: The older royalty-free alternative, VP9, lagged behind H.265 in compression. AV1 was built to match or exceed H.265 quality while remaining completely free.

The result is a codec that compresses video more efficiently than any of its widely-adopted predecessors, while being freely implementable by anyone.

AV1 at a glance:

AV1 uses the same foundational approach as H.264 and H.265 — block-based transform coding — but introduces advances in intra prediction, inter prediction, transform coding, and in-loop filtering that produce significantly better results at lower bitrates.

AV1 vs. H.264 vs. H.265 vs. VP9

Understanding where AV1 fits in the codec landscape helps you decide when to use it. Here’s how the four major codecs compare:

For a detailed breakdown of AV1 and H.264 performance differences, see our AV1 vs. H.264 comparison. For how H.265 measures up against H.264, see our H.265 vs. H.264 guide.

The licensing difference matters in practice. H.265 has notoriously fragmented licensing — multiple patent pools exist, which has blocked browser adoption and slowed open-source tooling. Firefox and Chrome still don’t have broad H.265 playback support for exactly this reason. AV1’s royalty-free status means it can be freely built into browsers, operating systems, and open-source tools without legal friction.

VP9 vs. AV1: VP9 was Google’s royalty-free codec before AV1. AV1 delivers roughly 20–30% better compression than VP9 at the same quality. Most platforms that adopted VP9 — YouTube, Google Meet, Chrome — are now migrating to AV1.

The practical summary: If you’re choosing a codec for web-based VOD delivery today, AV1 is the best combination of compression efficiency and licensing freedom. H.264 remains the default for live streaming and maximum compatibility. H.265 is strong for broadcast and closed OTT ecosystems where hardware support is controlled.

How Does AV1 Compression Work?

AV1 uses a block-based transform coding architecture — the same fundamental approach as H.264 and H.265. What sets AV1 apart is that it improves nearly every step of the encoding pipeline.

Here’s how AV1 encodes a video frame:

1. Block partitioning

AV1 divides each frame into blocks. Unlike H.264’s fixed 16×16 macroblock structure, AV1 supports flexible block sizes from 4×4 up to 128×128 pixels. Larger blocks work well for smooth regions like sky or backgrounds; smaller blocks handle fine detail and sharp edges. This flexibility means fewer bits are needed to represent each region accurately.

2. Intra prediction

For blocks that don’t reference other frames (within-frame prediction), AV1 predicts pixel values from neighboring blocks. AV1 supports 56 directional prediction modes, compared to H.264’s 9. More modes means better guesses, which means fewer residual bits to encode.

3. Inter prediction (motion compensation)

For blocks that reference previous or future frames, AV1 uses motion compensation to predict content across time. AV1 introduces several advances over older codecs:
– Compound prediction: Blending two reference frames instead of one
– Warped motion: Handling global camera motion (pan, zoom, rotation) with affine transformations
– Overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC): Smoothing block boundaries during motion estimation

These techniques remove temporal redundancy more effectively than H.264 or H.265.

4. Transform coding

After prediction, the residual (the difference between the predicted block and the actual pixels) is transformed. H.264 uses only DCT (discrete cosine transform). AV1 supports multiple transform types — DCT, ADST (asymmetric DST), WHT (Walsh-Hadamard transform), and identity — and can choose the best transform type per block. The transformed coefficients are then quantized and entropy-coded.

5. In-loop filters

AV1 applies three post-processing filters during decoding to reduce artifacts:
– Deblocking filter: Reduces blocking at block boundaries
– CDEF (Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter): Reduces ringing artifacts while preserving edges
– Loop restoration filter: Applies Wiener filters and self-guided restoration to recover fine detail

These filters improve perceptual quality without storing extra data in the stream.

6. Internal bit depth

AV1 processes video at 10-bit or 12-bit precision internally, even for 8-bit output. This reduces rounding errors during encoding operations and produces better output quality, particularly in areas with subtle gradients.

The compression gains from AV1 come from all of these improvements working together — not any single change to the pipeline. Each stage squeezes out a bit more redundancy, and the cumulative result is a 30–50% reduction in file size or bitrate at the same perceptual quality.

Advantages of the AV1 Codec

Royalty-free licensing

AV1 is free for anyone to use, implement, and distribute. No per-unit royalties, no patent pools, no licensing agreements. For open-source projects, browser vendors, and companies shipping at scale, this eliminates real legal and financial complexity. It’s why AV1 achieved universal browser support much faster than H.265 ever did.

Significantly better compression

AV1 compresses video approximately 50% more efficiently than H.264 and 30% more efficiently than H.265. At the same perceptual quality, an AV1-encoded file needs roughly half the data of an H.264 file. That translates directly to lower streaming bitrates, lower CDN bandwidth costs, and lower data consumption for your users.

For a platform delivering millions of video minutes per month, this compression advantage has real financial impact.

4K, 8K, and HDR support

AV1 was designed for high-resolution delivery. It supports 4K and 8K video, HDR (High Dynamic Range), wide color gamut (WCG), and 10-bit/12-bit color depth. YouTube has served 8K AV1 content since 2020. If you’re building a platform where visual quality at high resolutions matters, AV1 handles it well.

Universal browser support

AV1 is supported across Chrome (since version 70, 2018), Firefox (since version 67, 2019), Edge (Chromium-based), Opera, and Safari (since version 16, 2022). As of 2025, AV1 playback is available in all major desktop browsers. Safari was the last major holdout — Apple added AV1 software decode in macOS Ventura and hardware decode in M-series Macs and iPhone 15+.

Growing hardware acceleration

Early AV1 adoption was slowed by the lack of hardware decoders. Software AV1 decoding is CPU-intensive, which made high-resolution playback impractical on older or lower-power devices.

That has changed significantly. Intel Ice Lake (11th gen) and newer, AMD RDNA 2 (RX 6000 series) and newer, NVIDIA Ampere (RTX 30 series) and newer, Apple M1 and newer, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and newer all include dedicated AV1 hardware decode support. Hardware encode support is also spreading, though it remains more limited than decode.

Strong industry momentum

AV1 adoption has reached a point where it’s no longer experimental. YouTube encodes over 75% of its library in AV1. Netflix uses AV1 for 30% of streams. Discord, Meta, Twitch, and Google Meet all deploy AV1. The codec has proven itself in production at the largest scale in the industry.

Disadvantages and Limitations of AV1

Slow software encoding

AV1’s biggest limitation is encoding complexity. Software-based AV1 encoding using the libaom reference encoder can be 50–100x slower than H.264 encoding at the same quality. Even faster software encoders like SVT-AV1 are significantly slower than H.264 or H.265 software encoding.

This is the main reason AV1 adoption for live streaming has lagged behind VOD. Real-time software AV1 encoding at broadcast quality is still impractical for most use cases on typical server hardware.

Limited hardware encoder coverage

While hardware AV1 decode support is now widespread, hardware encode support is more limited. Not all devices that can play AV1 can encode it in hardware. Teams building real-time video conferencing or live broadcasting tools need to verify hardware encoder availability across their full target device range before committing to AV1.

Higher CPU load on devices without hardware decode

Devices without dedicated AV1 hardware decoders fall back to software decoding, which requires significant CPU resources. On older smartphones, budget devices, or lower-power hardware, software AV1 decoding at 1080p or above can cause dropped frames, stuttering, or high battery drain.

Not yet practical for live streaming ingest

Most live streaming infrastructure — hardware encoders, broadcast software like OBS, RTMP/SRT ingest pipelines — defaults to H.264 or H.265. AV1 encoding in real time requires either specialized hardware (NVIDIA RTX 30+, Intel Arc) or accepting lower quality than what software encoding produces offline. For most live streaming applications today, H.264 remains the practical choice for ingest.

Uneven mobile support on older and budget devices

Flagship phones from 2021+ typically include AV1 hardware decode, but budget and mid-range devices may not. If your app serves a global audience that includes users on older or lower-cost Android devices, you’ll want to test AV1 playback across representative hardware before deploying it as your primary delivery codec.

Managing codec compatibility, adaptive bitrate renditions, and CDN delivery across device types is the kind of infrastructure problem that a video hosting API handles at the platform level — so your team can focus on building the product instead of the pipeline.

AV1 Hardware and Browser Support

Browser support (2025)

Desktop GPU support

Mobile chipset support

A practical rule: for devices manufactured after 2022, assume AV1 hardware decode is likely available. For encoding support, verify against specific chipset documentation.

How to Encode with AV1

There are three main open-source software AV1 encoders used in production, all available through FFmpeg. Understanding the differences helps you pick the right one for your workflow.

libaom (aomenc)

The reference AV1 encoder, developed by Google and the Alliance for Open Media. It produces the highest-quality AV1 output at a given file size but is extremely slow — often 50–100x slower than H.264. Useful for research, quality benchmarking, and offline archival encoding where time is not a constraint.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libaom-av1 -crf 30 -b:v 0 output.webm

-crf 30 sets constant quality (lower = better quality, larger file). -b:v 0 disables bitrate targeting so CRF mode is active.

SVT-AV1

Developed by Intel in collaboration with Netflix, SVT-AV1 is the fastest multi-threaded software AV1 encoder. It scales well across CPU cores and is now used in production by Netflix and other large platforms. Quality is slightly lower than libaom at the same file size, but encoding speed is dramatically higher — making it the practical choice for production VOD workflows.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 28 -preset 6 output.mp4

-preset controls the speed/quality trade-off (0 = slowest/best quality, 12 = fastest). Preset 6–8 is a reasonable starting point for production encoding.

rav1e

A Rust-based AV1 encoder focused on correctness and safety. Less commonly used in production than SVT-AV1, but respected in the open-source community.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v librav1e -qp 80 output.mp4

Hardware encoders

For real-time or near-real-time AV1 encoding, hardware encoders are the practical option:

• NVIDIA NVENC (AV1): Available on RTX 30-series and newer. Use -c:v av1_nvenc in FFmpeg.
• Intel QuickSync (AV1): Available on Intel Arc GPUs. Use -c:v av1_qsv in FFmpeg.
• Apple VideoToolbox: AV1 encode on M-series chips. Use -c:v av1_videotoolbox in FFmpeg.

Hardware encoding is significantly faster than software but typically produces lower quality at the same bitrate. For broadcast or live use cases where quality is critical, hardware encoder output may need to be tested carefully against your quality targets.

Understanding how video encoders fit into a delivery pipeline is useful context when choosing between software and hardware encoding paths. For teams handling cloud-based video encoding at scale, the encoding layer is typically managed server-side using SVT-AV1 or libaom within a job queue, often abstracted behind an API. For a deeper look at encoding strategies for development teams, see our guide to video encoding for developers.

AV1 for Live Streaming and Video Applications

AV1 is well-suited for VOD (video on demand) workflows. Platforms encode their libraries offline at high quality using SVT-AV1 or libaom, then serve the output to viewers on compatible devices. The compression gains are realized at every view, and the encoding cost is paid once.

For live streaming, AV1 is still developing. The core challenge is encoding latency — real-time software AV1 encoding at broadcast quality is too slow for most live scenarios on typical hardware. Hardware encoders (NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Arc) can encode AV1 in real time, but quality is variable and support across ingest infrastructure is inconsistent.

Most live streaming applications today follow this pattern:

1. Accept H.264 or H.265 ingest via RTMP or SRT from the broadcaster’s encoder
2. Transcode server-side to multiple adaptive bitrate renditions in HLS streaming format
3. Optionally add an AV1 rendition for delivery to compatible clients

This means AV1 has the most impact at the delivery and playback layer, not the ingest layer. Viewers on AV1-capable browsers get lower bandwidth usage; viewers on older devices fall back to H.264 automatically through adaptive bitrate streaming.

For video conferencing applications, AV1 is gaining traction in WebRTC. Discord deployed AV1 for video calls, and Google Meet supports AV1 on capable hardware. The codec handles the typical video call use case — talking heads, relatively low motion — well, and the compression savings are meaningful at scale.

When evaluating a video transcoding API for your platform, AV1 transcoding support is worth prioritizing, especially if you’re building a VOD service or archive platform where the compression benefits compound across a large content library.

Is AV1 Right for Your Project?

AV1 is a good fit if:
– You’re building a VOD platform or on-demand video service
– Your users are primarily on modern browsers and devices (2020+)
– You want to reduce CDN bandwidth costs without trading away image quality
– You’re encoding content offline rather than in real time
– Your users are on high-resolution screens (1080p, 4K) where compression efficiency has the most impact

AV1 may not be the right choice if:
– You need real-time live streaming and don’t have hardware AV1 encoder support
– You’re targeting a broad global audience that includes users on older or budget smartphones without AV1 hardware decode
– Your OTT app targets legacy streaming devices (older Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV models) that don’t support AV1
– Your video formats need to reach the widest possible device compatibility and you don’t have resources to maintain multiple codec renditions

A practical approach for most applications: serve H.264 as a universal fallback and AV1 as a primary rendition for compatible clients. Most modern ABR manifests support codec-based selection. This way, users on capable devices get the bandwidth savings, while everyone else gets a reliable experience.

AV1 Codec FAQ

What does AV1 stand for?

AV1 stands for AOMedia Video 1. The name comes from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), the consortium of tech companies that developed it. Members include Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Intel, ARM, and others.

Is AV1 better than H.265?

AV1 and H.265 produce similar compression at the same perceptual quality. The key differences are licensing (AV1 is royalty-free; H.265 has multiple patent pools with complex licensing) and browser support (AV1 works in all major browsers; H.265 does not). For web-based VOD delivery, AV1 is generally preferred. For closed OTT ecosystems or hardware-controlled environments, H.265 may offer better hardware encode support. See our H.265 video format guide for a deeper look at how H.265 works.

Does AV1 work on all devices?

AV1 playback is supported in all major browsers as of 2025, most flagship smartphones from 2020+, and most streaming devices and smart TVs made after 2022. Devices without dedicated AV1 hardware decoders fall back to software decoding, which works but uses more CPU and battery. Hardware AV1 encoding is available on a narrower set of recent chips.

Can I use AV1 for live streaming?

AV1 is not yet widely used for live streaming ingest because real-time software encoding is too slow for most broadcast scenarios. Hardware AV1 encoding on NVIDIA RTX 30+ and Intel Arc GPUs is fast enough for real-time use, but quality and latency vary. Most live streaming pipelines still use H.264 or H.265 for ingest, with AV1 available as an optional delivery rendition for compatible clients.

What is the difference between AV1 and VP9?

Both AV1 and VP9 are royalty-free codecs with Google’s involvement. AV1 is VP9’s successor, offering roughly 20–30% better compression at the same visual quality. Most platforms that adopted VP9 are migrating to AV1. VP9 has broader hardware decode support on older devices, so it remains useful as a compatibility fallback.

What container formats work with AV1?

AV1 video can be stored in MP4 (ISOBMFF), WebM, and MKV containers. MP4 is the most broadly compatible for distribution and OTT delivery. WebM is commonly used for browser-to-browser delivery.

Is AV1 free to use?

Yes. AV1 is completely royalty-free and open-source. You can encode, decode, distribute, and build commercial products using AV1 without licensing fees or agreements. This is one of its primary advantages over H.264 and H.265.

How much does AV1 reduce bandwidth costs?

AV1 reduces the bitrate needed for a given quality level by approximately 50% compared to H.264 and 30% compared to H.265. The impact on video bitrate costs scales with your delivery volume — the more video you serve, the more the compression savings add up.

Which AV1 encoder should I use for production?

For offline VOD encoding, SVT-AV1 is the best balance of quality and speed and is used in production by Netflix. libaom produces slightly higher quality but is much slower — use it for quality benchmarking. For real-time hardware encoding, NVIDIA NVENC (AV1) on RTX 30+ hardware is the most widely available option.

Build Video Apps Without the Codec Headache

The AV1 codec is now the standard for efficient web-based video encoding — and its adoption will only grow as hardware support spreads across the device landscape.

For most development teams, the bigger challenge isn’t understanding AV1 — it’s managing the full delivery stack: encoding pipelines, adaptive bitrate renditions, CDN distribution, and device compatibility across a fragmented hardware ecosystem.

LiveAPI handles that infrastructure layer. Built on top of HLS with adaptive bitrate encoding, global delivery through Akamai, Cloudflare, and Fastly, and support for RTMP and SRT ingest, LiveAPI gives your team a full video encoding and streaming backend through a single API. You can go from integration to live video in days, not months.

Get started with LiveAPI and ship your video features faster.