Netflix has quietly crossed an important technical milestone: around 30% of all global viewing on the platform is now delivered in AV1, the open codec backed by the Alliance for Open Media. The figure comes from Netflix’s own engineering team and confirms what many in the industry have been expecting for years: open codecs have moved from experiment to core production infrastructure for large-scale streaming.
At the same time, the next generation, AV2, is expected around the end of 2025 within AOMedia. It’s not in production yet, but it’s already influencing technical roadmaps at providers like Netflix, who are designing their infrastructure for a gradual transition from AV1 to AV2.
Here’s a technical breakdown of what Netflix is doing with AV1 today, and what to expect when AV2 arrives.
From “H.264 everywhere” to a layered codec stack
For years, the picture was simple: H.264/AVC as the main codec for almost the entire catalog. It was universal, cheap to decode, and widely supported, but increasingly inefficient for today’s requirements around 4K, HDR, and high frame rates.
Today, Netflix runs a much more sophisticated codec stack:
- AVC (H.264)
- Role: legacy compatibility (older devices, browsers without modern codec support).
- Strength: low compute cost, very mature ecosystem.
- Limitation: poor compression efficiency by current standards.
- HEVC (H.265)
- Role: 4K and HDR on devices that don’t support AV1.
- Strength: significantly better compression than H.264.
- Limitation: fragmented licensing, non-trivial usage costs.
- AV1
- Role: preferred codec on modern devices, already the second most used codec at Netflix and on track to become the first.
- Strength: better compression, open licensing model, advanced toolset (tiling, Film Grain Synthesis, etc.).
- Limitation: very high encoding complexity, need for dedicated hardware for efficient decoding.
This coexistence lets Netflix maximize device coverage while pushing AV1 wherever hardware and software support is available.
Measurable gains: quality, bandwidth, and less buffering
The move toward AV1 isn’t ideological, it’s numerical. Netflix has shared several internal metrics:
- Video quality (VMAF)
- On average, AV1 delivers about +4.3 VMAF points over AVC and about +0.9 points over HEVC in production tests at the same bitrate.
- Bandwidth usage
- AV1 sessions consume roughly one-third less bandwidth than equivalent AVC and HEVC sessions for similar perceived quality.
- Playback stability
- Netflix reports about 45% fewer buffering interruptions on AV1 sessions compared to AVC/HEVC, thanks to lower bitrates and more adaptive encoding.
At a service scale of more than 300 million subscribers, these margins have direct impact:
- Fewer bits per viewing hour ⇒ less pressure on Open Connect, Netflix’s own CDN, and on ISP networks.
- More robust playback under challenging conditions (congested Wi-Fi, mobile networks, etc.).
How Netflix deploys AV1: pipeline and device certification
1. Encoding and packaging
Netflix uses a per-title encoding pipeline, tailoring the bitrate ladder and resolutions to the characteristics of each piece of content. For AV1, that means:
- Carefully choosing resolutions, QP, GOP structure, tiling, filters, intra/inter tools, and other codec parameters.
- Using objective metrics (VMAF, PSNR, SSIM) to optimize the quality/bitrate trade-off.
- Integrating the result into delivery formats such as DASH and HLS, generating multiple AV1 representations alongside other codecs.
2. Client logic
On the user side, the Netflix app or browser decides which video track to request:
- It detects device capabilities (hardware AV1, HEVC, AVC-only, etc.).
- It checks entitlement and profile features (4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, and so on).
- It negotiates with the backend to pick the most appropriate codec + profile + bitrate combination.
If the device supports AV1 in hardware (or in some cases via a software decoder like dav1d), the client will usually prioritize AV1 within the available ladder.
3. Device certification
Since 2019, AV1 has been part of Netflix’s device certification program:
- Bitstream conformance tests: the device must decode AV1 streams that follow the spec without visual or stability issues.
- Performance tests: 4K@60 fps playback with no dropped frames or thermal problems.
- Validation of the end-to-end color pipeline, HDR handling, scaling, and DRM.
Between 2021 and 2025, roughly 88% of large-screen devices submitted for Netflix certification already included AV1 support, and since 2023 almost all new models going through the program are AV1-capable.
AV1 + HDR10+: dynamic metadata for more efficient HDR
Netflix was an early HDR adopter with HDR10 and Dolby Vision. With AV1, it’s adding HDR10+, which uses dynamic metadata per scene or frame:
- The video is encoded in AV1 with PQ transfer function and BT.2020 color space.
- HDR10+ metadata lets the device adjust tone mapping per device and per scene.
- The result is a combination of better highlight and shadow detail with lower bitrates.
According to Netflix, around 85% of HDR viewing hours already have AV1 + HDR10+ streams available, with a goal of covering essentially the entire HDR catalog in the short term.
Film Grain Synthesis: cinematic grain without blowing up the bitrate
Cinematic film grain is one of the worst-case patterns for compression: it’s random, high-frequency, and extremely expensive to encode if you keep it as-is in every frame. AV1 offers a dedicated solution: Film Grain Synthesis (FGS).
The technical idea:
- The encoder detects and separates the grain from the main signal.
- It encodes a “clean” version of the frame, without grain, which is much easier to compress.
- It writes statistical parameters into the AV1 bitstream describing how the grain should be reconstructed.
- The decoder resynthesizes the grain at playback time, applying it over the base image.
Netflix rolled FGS into production in 2025 and reports striking results:
- Streams with FGS achieve visibly better quality on grainy material than standard AV1 encodes, while using up to 60–66% lower bitrate in some cases.
AV1 vs. AVC, HEVC, and future AV2: technical comparison
Table 1 – Codec profile in Netflix’s ecosystem
| Codec | Architecture and key tools | Compression vs. H.264 (rough) | Encoding complexity | Typical role at Netflix today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H.264 / AVC | 16×16 macroblocks, CABAC/CAVLC, classic intra/inter prediction | Baseline (0%) | Low–medium | Legacy compatibility, SD/HD |
| HEVC / H.265 | CTUs up to 64×64, flexible partitions, SAO/ALF | ~40–50% better in many scenarios | High | 4K/HDR on devices without AV1 |
| AV1 | 128×128 superblocks, tiling, warping, FGS, advanced filters and tools | ≈30% better than AVC; competitive with HEVC | Very high | Second most used; on track to become the primary codec |
| AV2 | Next-gen AOMedia design; improved prediction, granularity, and advanced scenarios (AR/VR, multiview) | Expected to clearly beat AV1 (no final numbers yet) | Very high (expected) | Spec phase; no large-scale commercial deployment yet |
Table 2 – Practical effect on user experience (approximate)
| Metric | AVC | HEVC | AV1 (recent Netflix data) |
|---|---|---|---|
| VMAF quality (reference = AVC) | 100 | ~110 | ~114.3 |
| Relative bitrate for same quality | 100% | ~70–75% | ~66% (≈ −33%) |
| Buffering interruptions | 100 (base) | Lower than AVC | ~55 (≈ −45%) |
Exact values depend on content, presets, and network conditions, but the trends are consistent with public AV1 studies and Netflix’s own production data.
The price of efficiency: compute cost and tooling
The downside of AV1 is its compute cost:
- With high-quality presets, encoding AV1 can be tens of times slower than encoding H.264, even with optimized implementations (SVT-AV1, etc.).
- For a home user transcoding a personal video, this cost may not be worth it; for Netflix, it is: the higher encoding bill is offset by ongoing bandwidth savings and a better user experience at massive scale.
With AV2, the trade-off will be even more delicate:
- Additional compression gains are expected, but with even more complexity.
- Real-world deployment will depend on encoders, GPUs, and dedicated ASICs capable of running AV2 in reasonable times, and on vendors shipping AV2 hardware decoders in TVs, set-top boxes, consoles, and mobile SoCs.
Beyond VOD: live and cloud gaming
For now, most AV1 usage at Netflix is concentrated in video-on-demand. But the company sees two future frontiers where the codec can matter a lot:
- Hyper-scale live streaming
- Events with tens of millions of concurrent viewers.
- AV1 reduces the required bitrate, making it easier for infrastructure to absorb huge traffic peaks.
- The challenge is low-latency encoding and end-to-end pipelines that can operate in real time at AV1’s complexity.
- Cloud gaming
- Every player action needs to be reflected on screen within milliseconds.
- AV1 can help by reducing frame sizes for a given quality level, increasing the odds of delivering smooth motion even on unstable connections.
- This requires highly optimized encoders, plus decoders that can keep up at 60 fps (or more) with minimal latency.
Once AV2 arrives with broad hardware support, it could push these use cases even further. But in practice, AV1 will remain the workhorse codec in production for years.
Conclusion: AV1 as today’s streaming backbone, AV2 as the next jump
The fact that about 30% of Netflix viewing is already served in AV1 confirms that AOMedia’s open codec has moved from promise to industrial reality. For end users, the change is invisible: they don’t pick codecs, they just notice that shows look better, use less data, and buffer less often.
For engineering teams, AV1 —and soon AV2— is one of the most powerful levers to keep scaling internet video:
- More quality per bit, which benefits providers, ISPs, and subscribers alike.
- New technical capabilities: HDR10+, Film Grain Synthesis, layered coding for graphics in live workflows, and more.
- A gradual transition towards open codecs, reducing dependency on opaque licensing models.
In the near term, the most likely landscape is:
- AV1 consolidating as the dominant codec on new devices.
- HEVC keeping a tactical role where AV1 is not supported.
- H.264 surviving as the minimum compatibility layer.
- AV2 entering labs and early adopters first, then rolling out widely once hardware and tooling are ready.
In other words: AV1 is the operational present of advanced streaming; AV2 is its near future.