AV1 beats x264 and libvpx-vp9 in practical use case

Improved video compression is important for delivering digital video files more quickly and with higher quality, while using less bandwidth and storage. Everything from 4K movie streaming to smartphone video chat to laptop screen sharing can be enhanced by making the video files smaller through better compression codecs.

The Alliance for Open Media — a consortium founded in 2015 and made up of video-on-demand providers including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix, along with web browser developers and semiconductor firms — has just released AV1 (also known as AOMedia Video 1), a new open, royalty-free video format that promises to be a significant step forward in compression efficiency.