Tech's biggest companies -- including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Cisco and Netflix -- have finished the first version of video compression technology called AV1, and now they're ready to use it to speed up your streaming video.
AV1 can match the quality of the prevailing video compression technologies, HEVC and VP9, using 30 percent to 40 percent less network capacity, said Gabe Frost, director of the Alliance for Open Media, which developed the technology. Although some technologies have a hard time escaping the labs, AV1 isn't one of them: It'll soon deliver video from YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix and Facebook as the technology spreads to laptops and phones.
Compression is key to streaming video. With good compression, you can avoid blocky or blurry artifacts, shorten waiting times for video to start, pare back your network usage and sometimes upgrade to higher-resolution video, like 4K, without having to upgrade your broadband connection.
But AV1 could have another big effect, too: leaving behind a video patent system that arguably has held back the speed boosts that HEVC could have delivered. Patent royalty requirements have limited the spread of HEVC, but AV1 is open-source software and costs nothing to use.
"I think free always wins," said Jon Peddie, analyst at Jon Peddie Research.
AV1 could be used in any sort of video connection your computer or smartphone can make -- streaming movies, video chat, screen sharing and video game streaming. It could also help usher in newer technologies, like high-resolution 4K video and virtual reality headsets that need high resolution and minimal delays decoding video sent over a network.
Spinning the flywheel
The alliance announced Wednesday that it's finished the AV1 specification, which describes in detail how a web browser, phone, TV or other device turns the technology's "bitstream" into a video that can be shown on a screen. Support in browsers and widely used software tools like ffmpeg should arrive soon -- indeed, AV1 already is in Mozilla's Firefox browser in test form.
