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.

This scientific evaluation puts AV1 to the test against industry standard codecs and shows that AV1 is able to outperform VP9 and even HEVC by up to 40%.

Bitmovin and Mozilla, both members of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), are partnering to bring AV1 playback with HTML5 to Firefox as the first browser to play AV1 MPEG-DASH/HLS streams. While the AV1 bitstream is still being finalized, the industry is gearing for fast adoption of the new codec, which promises to be 25-35% more efficient than VP9 and H.265/HEVC.