# AOMedia touts AV2 codec adoption; Intel developing open-source SVT-AV2 encoder

> **Key takeaway:** Intel is building SVT-AV2, an open-source CPU-based encoder for the royalty-free AV2 codec that offers 30% better compression than AV1, with YouTube and Meta planning deployment.

**Published:** 2026-10-26T08:14:15Z 
**Source:** Phoronix Benchmarks & Drivers 
**Category:** kernel-os 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/aomedia-touts-av2-codec-adoption-intel-developing-open-sourc.html 

## Summary
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has issued a press release highlighting early industry adoption of the AV2 video codec, whose v1.0 specification was finalized in May. AV2 delivers approximately 30% improved compression efficiency over AV1 along with enhanced HDR performance, and counts Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, Netflix, and Samsung among its backers.

Google is currently testing AV2 on YouTube and in Chrome, with public streams expected in early 2027, while Meta has committed to deploying AV2 across Facebook and Instagram video. Intel is separately developing SVT-AV2, extending its open-source Scalable Video Technology encoder lineage that already includes widely-used SVT-AV1.

## SVT-AV2 and the open-source encoder pipeline
- **SVT-AV2 lineage:** Intel's new encoder follows SVT-AV1, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-VP9, all open-source CPU-based encoders released under permissive licenses.
- **Compression gains:** AV2 v1.0 achieves roughly 30% better compression efficiency than AV1, reducing bandwidth requirements for equivalent quality.
- **HDR improvements:** The specification includes enhancements to high dynamic range video handling beyond what AV1 provides.
- **Royalty-free model:** AV2 maintains AOMedia's patent-free approach, contrasting with HEVC/VVC licensing pools that have complicated adoption.
- **Platform testing:** Google's Chrome and YouTube experiments represent the first major consumer-facing AV2 validation at scale.

## Why it matters
SVT-AV2's development matters for Linux distributions and streaming infrastructure because Intel's SVT-AV1 has become the production-quality reference for CPU-based AV1 encoding; a similarly open AV2 encoder will enable early server and desktop adoption without proprietary dependencies. For Steam/Linux gaming and broader multimedia pipelines, royalty-free codecs reduce platform licensing friction, though hardware decode acceleration in GPUs and APUs will likely lag behind software encoder availability by one to two generations.