The Alliance for Open Media has published the first version of the AV2 specification.
AV2 is the next-generation video coding specification from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). Building on the foundation of AV1, AV2 is engineered to provide superior compression efficiency, enabling high-quality video delivery at significantly lower bitrates. It is optimized for the evolving demands of streaming, broadcasting, and real-time video conferencing.
This specification serves as the definitive technical reference for AV2 implementations. It outlines the bitstream syntax, semantics, and decoding processes required to ensure full conformance.
AV2 provides enhanced support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range.
↫ AV2 website
Do you remember when the video codec wars – open vs. closed – were raging all across the web, for years? Even back then I argued that open would win, as it usually does, and over 15 years later the most widely-used video codecs on the planet being open is just a normal fact of life nobody writes or talks about anymore. VP8, VP9, AV1, and now this upcoming AV2 are all open and royalty-free, the by far largest video platform, YouTube, serves them by default, and the video codec problem is a solved problem, relegated to the spinning disk drive of history.
I was told I was an idealist and that this would never happen, and yet, here we are.
I think the story is murkier than you make it out to be. H.264 is still very much the most used in so many other areas. Dbtv standards use it for a start and regardless of how much impact you think TV has these days its still the core of how the various stations encode their video streams even on their online platforms. Its also remains the most popular formats for sharing videos not through youtube, things like piracy of all kinds (regardless of your thoughts on it) but also things like video taken on phones and shared over various social platforms.
The interesting metric would be how much material uploaded to youtube is in an open format. That the monopolies can choose to convert the files before serving them is not all that interesting.
Uh, 99.999% of media is still not using open codecs. Sure, while I appreciate the youtube element, there’s still a long long long way to go. Now if universally, all browsers across all platforms supported AV1 or 2 out of the box, I think that alone might help push adoption. But, that hasn’t happened.
Don’t get me wrong (going for the jugular here), I appreciate that ogg vorbis support (was) supported inside everyone’s (at the time) browser, but for whatever reason, it never took off. Just a very real case and point.
That is, even “browser support” doesn’t guarantee successful change.