Apple joins alliance to develop av1 ​​video codec

Apple has joined the alliance of the likes of Google and Microsoft to develop a new video compression technology, av1. This likely successor to hevc and vp9 is capable of compressing video files even further.

Now that Apple has joined the Alliance for Open Media, this means that the Cupertino company will also support the av1 codec in the future. CNet has approached Apple with a request for comment, but the company has not responded, making it unclear what Apple plans to do with the video codec in development.

Apple adopted hevc or h.265 as the codec for delivering 4k and hdr content in 2017, while Google uses the open source codec vp9. Both codecs are successors to h264, also known as avc. Vp9 does not require payment of any royalties, while hevc does.

Av1, or in full AOMedia Video 1, is still in development, but a first version of the codec should be ready in the coming weeks. Mozilla previously indicated that the av1 video compression in the Firefox browser resulted in videos that were 25 to 35 percent smaller in file size than hevc or vp9.

The Alliance for Open Media was founded in 2015 by Microsoft, Google, Intel, Mozilla, Amazon, Netflix and Nvidia, among others, with the goal of developing a new improved video compression method more suitable for delivering content over networks. The new av1 codec should become an open source codec without the obligation to pay royalties for it.