AV1 was the first generation royalty-free coding standard developed by Alliance for Open Media, of which Meta is one of the founding members. Since its release in 2018, we have worked closely with the open source community to implement and optimize AV1 software decoder and encoder. Early in 2022, we believed AV1 was ready for delivery at scale for key VOD applications such as Facebook(FB) Reels and Instagram (IG) Reels. Since then, we have started delivering AV1 encoded FB/IG Reels videos to selected iPhone and Android devices. After roll out, we have observed great engagement win, playback quality improvement, and bitrate reduction with AV1.
In this talk, we will share our journey on how we enabled AV1 end-to-end from Meta servers to users’ mobile screens around the world. First, we will talk about AV1 production, including encoding configuration and ABR algorithms. Further, since the main delivery challenge is on the decoder and client side, we will also talk about the learnings on integrating AV1 software decoder on both iOS and Android devices and the current state. Finally, some ongoing and future work will also be presented.