What is AV1? The Royalty-Free Video Codec Explained

AV1 (AOMedia Video 1) is a royalty-free, open video codec designed to succeed H.264 and HEVC for internet streaming. Released in 2018 by the Alliance for Open Media—a consortium including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, and Meta—it delivers roughly 30% better compression than HEVC at equivalent quality without patent-pool royalties, and it is now deployed at scale by YouTube and Netflix.

AV1 matters to us because it is the royalty-free future of bandwidth-heavy distribution. As the recordings, edits, and repurposed clips our customers produce reach ever larger global audiences, AV1 is where delivery economics are heading—and this page documents how it works.

How AV1 works

AV1 refines the hybrid coding pipeline with larger blocks, more prediction modes, and a set of tools no earlier codec has.

Superblocks. Frames are partitioned into superblocks of 128×128 or 64×64 samples, recursively split into coding blocks as small as 4×4. Beyond quadtrees, AV1 adds horizontal, vertical, and T-shaped partitions, so block shapes can track actual object boundaries instead of only squares.

Intra prediction. AV1 offers 56 directional modes at finer angular steps than HEVC, plus non-directional predictors (DC, Paeth, and smooth modes) that handle gradients well. Recursive filtering of reference samples smooths predictions before they are used.

Inter prediction. Motion tools include compound prediction (averaging two references), warped motion compensation for rotation and zoom, global motion for camera moves, and an inter-intra mode that blends temporal and spatial prediction within one block. Frame referencing supports up to seven reference frames per block.

Transform and quantization. Residuals are coded with transforms up to 64×64, chosen per block from multiple kernels (DCT, ADST, identity, and their flipped variants). Quantization is followed by a multi-symbol arithmetic entropy coder that models context more richly than CABAC.

In-loop restoration. This is where AV1 genuinely departs from its predecessors. After the deblocking filter, the Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter (CDEF) sharpens edges along their detected direction, and loop restoration (Wiener or self-guided filters) further cleans up the reconstruction.

Film grain synthesis. Sensor noise and film grain are expensive to encode—they look like random detail. AV1 instead removes grain at the encoder, models it statistically, and re-synthesizes it in the decoder. Grainy content can save 30%+ of its bitrate from this tool alone.

Screen content tools. Palette mode and intra block copy (IntraBC) treat screen recordings and game content efficiently, making AV1 viable for far more than camera-captured video.

Key features

• Royalty-free by design. AOM members license their patents to implementers at no cost under a defensive-termination model. (A third-party pool, Sisvel, has asserted claims; AOM disputes them and provides a legal defense fund.)
• ~30% better compression than HEVC, and roughly 50–70% better than H.264, at equal quality—the largest single-generation jump in mainstream codecs.
• Built for streaming. Segmentation, tile groups, and temporal layers map cleanly onto adaptive bitrate ladders and real-time use.
• dav1d, the reference-quality open decoder, made software AV1 playback fast enough for laptops and phones years before hardware arrived.
• SVT-AV1 (Intel/Netflix) cut encode times by orders of magnitude versus the original libaom reference encoder, making real-time and large-catalog AV1 practical.

How Videospan uses AV1

AV1 is where the economics of global delivery are heading, and it is the codec we look to for bandwidth-heavy distribution: one recording repurposed into clips and delivered to audiences across every region and network condition. Its compression advantage translates directly into lower delivery costs and faster-starting playback on constrained connections.

• Global distribution at scale. When a message goes out to tens of thousands of employees or a campaign ships to social channels worldwide, AV1's efficiency means the same quality at a fraction of the bandwidth—noticeable on mobile data and congested office networks alike.
• Royalty-free by design. AV1 carries no patent-pool royalties, so it ships in software in every modern browser, with no licensing exposure for us or for the enterprises we serve.
• A modern ladder, not a gamble. AV1 renditions build on top of our universal H.264 exports rather than replacing them, so adopting its efficiency never comes at the cost of compatibility.

AV1 vs H.264, HEVC, and VP9

Advantages

• Best compression of any widely deployed codec—direct CDN and storage savings at scale
• No patent-pool royalties, which is why browser vendors ship it in software everywhere
• Excellent at low bitrates, where its restoration filters preserve watchability
• Film grain synthesis and screen content tools have no equivalent in H.264 or HEVC
• Hardware decode now ships in most new GPUs, flagship phones, and smart TVs

Limitations

• Encoding is the most compute-intensive of the four; even with SVT-AV1, costs are multiples of x264
• Hardware decode, while growing fast, is absent on older devices—software decoding drains battery on low-end phones
• Apple hardware decode only arrived with the A17 Pro and M3 chips (2023); earlier Apple devices fall back to software or another codec
• For real-time low-latency use, achieving AV1's efficiency gains at acceptable speed requires careful encoder tuning

When to use AV1

Use AV1 for high-volume VOD delivery, where a 30% bandwidth reduction repays the extra encode cost many times over, and for premium quality tiers in your adaptive ladder. YouTube and Netflix already serve AV1 by default to capable devices. Keep H.264 renditions for the compatibility floor and consider HEVC for the Apple/TV segment during the transition.

What to ask a platform vendor: is AV1 on their delivery roadmap, and how do they decide which viewers receive it? The right answer pairs AV1 renditions for capable devices with a guaranteed H.264 baseline. If a vendor can't explain their fallback strategy, ask who in your organization ends up staring at a broken player.

A production AV1 encode with SVT-AV1 via ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libsvtav1 -preset 6 -crf 32 -g 240 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a libopus -b:a 128k out.mp4

SVT-AV1's -preset scale runs 0 (slowest, best) to 13 (fastest); 4–6 is the practical sweet spot for VOD. AV1 CRF values are not comparable to x264's—CRF 32 in SVT-AV1 is roughly the quality neighborhood of CRF 23 in x264, so always calibrate against your own content.

Glossary

AOMedia— Alliance for Open Media

The industry consortium (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Meta, and others) that developed AV1 and licenses it royalty-free.

Superblock

AV1's top-level processing unit, 128×128 or 64×64 samples, recursively partitioned into smaller coding blocks.

CDEF— Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter

An in-loop filter that detects edge directions and sharpens along them, restoring detail lost to quantization without amplifying artifacts.

Loop restoration

A post-deblocking filtering stage (Wiener or self-guided) that minimizes reconstruction error before a frame is used as a reference.

Film grain synthesis

An AV1 tool that strips noise/grain at encode time, models it statistically, and regenerates it during decoding.

SVT-AV1

The Scalable Video Technology encoder for AV1, originally from Intel and Netflix, that made AV1 encoding fast enough for production and real-time use.

dav1d

The fast, open-source AV1 decoder from VideoLAN, used in VLC, Chrome, and Firefox for software playback.

Warped motion

Motion compensation that models rotation, zoom, and affine transforms of a block, not just translation.

Royalty-free

Licensing under which implementers owe no patent royalties. AV1's license includes defensive termination to discourage patent litigation.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Video Codecs Explained: H.264, HEVC, AV1 & VP9
• What is H.264? AVC Video Codec Explained
• What is HEVC? H.265 Video Codec Explained
• What is VP9? Google's Open Video Codec Explained
• MP4 Container Format
• HLS Streaming