The AV1 continues to blend calmly into the landscape. The free and royalty-free video codec has been integrated into Handbrake, the famous software for converting and encoding video files, in the brand new version 1.6.0 (available for macOS, Windows and Linux). Notably, users of this Swiss Army Knife will find AV1 presets that don’t require digging into encoding options (it’s still possible).
AV1 follows VP9 and is an alternative to HEVC (H.265). Due to its technical and financial qualities, this codec is at the heart of several platforms such as YouTube and Netflix, and AV1 content can be played in Firefox, Chrome or even VLC. But when it comes to Apple software, the manufacturer is unfortunately always very reluctant.
A small opening was recently made for Safari, which displays AVIF images, a fixed format based on AV1. A small step that calls for others – especially since Apple has been part of the Alliance for Open Media, the main sponsor of the codec, since 2018. But for now, we still regret the lack of support for hardware decoding in Apple Silicon chips.
Google could push AV1 for Android 14… and Apple isn’t even supporting it