AV1 playback¶
AV1 (AOMedia Video 1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format developed by the Alliance for Open Media. It is designed to replace HEVC/H.265. Compared to H.265/HEVC in several tests, bitrate with AV1 is 9,5 to 22% less at the same quality. Compared to H.264, AV1 can reduce the bitrate by 50% at the same quality, and the higher the resolution, the better the compression.
The AV1 codec is based on VP9 and uses a similar block-based frequency transform method for compression, but also provides additional methods and filters for adaptive image quality enhancement.
AV1 is good for high-definition (4K, 8K) video and is supported on a large number of encoders, both software and hardware (Nvidia NVENC, Intel Media SDK). Some chips for media players and TVs also support AV1 hardware decoding in 4K or 8K resolution. Hardware support for AV1 encoding is available on a number of Nvidia, AMD, and Intel graphics cards.
AV1 support in browsers¶
Warning
Desktop browsers supporting AV1: Chrome (version 70 and higher), Opera (version 57 and higher), Mozilla Firefox (version 67 and higher). In Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, an extension is required to use AV1.
Most mobile browsers have AV1 support except Opera and Safari that do not support AV1 playback.
Desktop browsers:
| Internet Explorer |
Microsoft Edge |
Mozilla Firefox |
Google Chrome |
Safari | Opera |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ❌ | with AV1 extension | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Mobile browsers:
| iOS Safari |
Opera Mini |
Chrome for Android |
UC Browser for Android |
Samsung Internet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
AV1 support in protocols¶
- HLS supports AV1 when fMP4 container is in use.
- WebRTC supports AV1 with Opus audio codec.
- SRT supports AV1.
AV1 support in players¶
The AV1 codec is supported by most popular players, including VLC media player, K-Lite Codec Pack, Media Player Classic, MX Player, etc.