Samsung joins the Alliance for Open Media

Samsung, the electronics giant, announced that it is now joining the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) an important addition to the development of video compression technology AOMedia’s AV1. Technology giants Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Cisco Systems and Mozilla launched AOMedia in 2015, with Facebook and Apple joining AOMedia in 2018.

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium of firms from the semiconductor industry, video on demand providers, and web browser developers, founded in 2015. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. It succeeds VP9. It can have 20% higher data compression than VP9 or HEVC/H.265 from the Moving Picture Experts Group and about 50% higher than the widely used AVC.

AV1 is intended for use in HTML5 web video and WebRTC together with the Opus audio format.

Alliance for Open Media [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Video compression has relied on HEVC’s predecessor, H.264 or AVC, for many years. But better compression technology makes a higher-resolution 4K video more feasible, facilitating streaming video services that deliver high-resolution video over a limited bandwidth network.

“Samsung is a recognized pioneer in next-generation multimedia and video compression technology and an active contributor to the international video coding standards. We are committed to fostering innovation through openness,” said Seunghwan Cho, Executive Vice President of Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of the company’s SET business (end products). “We’re excited to join AOMedia to help open up new possibilities to use AV1 open-source, cross-platform, online video in ways that will optimize today’s ecosystem to meet the increasing demands of next-generation users.”