AV1 is a new video codec that promises to help companies and individuals transmit high-quality video over the internet efficiently, without paying royalty fees. Being royalty-free is important because:
- Current streaming video costs (a lot of) money
- Newer codecs are twice as efficient
- New codecs may cost ten times more
- With H.264, small players get a free ride
AV1 is different from AVC/H.264 because it:
- Uses next-generation compression technology that is nearly twice as efficient
- Can transmit high-quality video faster over the internet
- Has no licensing fees; anyone can compress and decode video files without paying royalties
- Can deliver higher-quality experiences to end users, even when bandwidth is constrained
You can evidently create the file type right now using FFMPEG, but encoding is very slow, something that is owed to how new the codec is. Hopefully this will be THE standard by 2020.
Related:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1
* https://hackernoon.com/encoding-av1-700b6ee4210