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AV1: The Future of Video Compression in Camera Systems

06 Nov 2025 - 09:55

Why AV1 Codec?

Digital video is growing rapidly – higher resolutions, higher frame rates, HDR, and the rising demand for real-time streaming. All of this puts increased pressure on bandwidth and storage. To keep up, the industry is looking for new ways to deliver more information at lower costs.

One of the most important steps forward is AV1 (AOMedia Video 1), developed by the Alliance for Open Media as an open and royalty-free standard. AV1 promises significant savings in data transmission while maintaining excellent image quality – making it especially attractive for live streaming of nature, cities, traffic, sporting events, religious services as well as for security and surveillance applications.

What is AV1 and Why is it Revolutionary?

AV1 uses modern compression methods that go far beyond older codecs like H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC).
 

Key advantages include:

• Higher compression efficiency – up to 30–50% lower bitrate at the same quality.
  
  
• Openness – royalty-free, unlike H.265.
  
  
• Future-proof – supports HDR, 8K resolutions, and high frame rates.
  
  

The main drawback has been its higher computational demands, especially for encoding. However, this is rapidly improving with the rise of hardware acceleration in chips and GPUs.

AV1 vs. the Most Common Codecs

When comparing AV1 with other codecs, the results are convincing:

• H.264 (AVC) – still the most widely used codec, but the least efficient. AV1 can reduce bitrate by up to 50% while keeping the same quality.
  
  
• H.265 (HEVC) – more modern, but burdened with licensing costs. AV1 usually offers ~30% additional savings.
  
  
• VP9 – widely used by YouTube, but AV1 outperforms it by 20–30% in efficiency.
  
  

📊 Bitrate comparison for 1080p/30fps

For camera applications, this means significant bandwidth and storage savings. For example, a stream that requires 4 Mbps with H.264 may deliver the same quality at just 2–2.5 Mbps with AV1.

Real-World Bandwidth Savings

In security camera environments, where video runs continuously and is archived long-term, even a 20% savings can mean a major reduction in costs.

• Lower bitrate = lower bandwidth requirements – crucial for remote sites or cloud solutions.
  
  
• Storage savings – longer retention times with the same disk capacity.
  
  
• Better image quality at existing bitrates – e.g., more details in low-light scenes.
  
  

📊 Monthly data volume for 100 cameras (1080p/30fps)

H.264: ~118 TB/month vs. AV1: ~65 TB/month → ~45% savings

AV1 in Axis ARTPEC-9 Cameras

A major milestone came when Axis Communications announced AV1 support in its latest cameras powered by the ARTPEC-9 SoC.

In an industry-first, Axis supports the proven AV1 video encoding standard, which is optimized for streaming media. 

Axis highlights the following benefits of AV1:

• Higher efficiency for cloud streaming,
  
  
• Reduced costs for bandwidth and storage,
  
  
• Compatibility with Axis Zipstream, further optimizing bitrate by analyzing less important parts of the image.
  
  

Early camera models supporting AV1 include the AXIS Q3556-LVE and AXIS Q1728, which offer AV1 alongside H.264, H.265, and Zipstream.

CamStreamer and AV1

AV1 support is also coming to our flagship application, CamStreamer App, which enables direct live streaming from Axis cameras to YouTube and custom RTMP servers.

Adding AV1 to CamStreamer App will deliver:

• Much lower data requirements for live streaming,
  
  
• High image quality even at limited bandwidth,
  
  
• Future-proof compatibility with modern streaming platforms.
  
  

This means users will be able to broadcast high-quality video even under challenging conditions, without replacing their camera infrastructure – all that’s needed is an AV1-enabled Axis camera and the CamStreamer App.

Conclusion

AV1 represents one of the most important steps in video compression in the past decade. Compared to H.264 and H.265, it provides the same image quality at lower bitrates – and it does so without licensing restrictions.

For security and streaming applications, where terabytes of data are transmitted daily, the transition to AV1 is both logical and economically advantageous. With Axis introducing AV1 support in its ARTPEC-9 cameras and CamStreamer bringing AV1 to the CamStreamer App, users can fully embrace this next-generation standard.

The future of video streaming is AV1 – and it’s closer than you think.

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