The APV codec is a professional video codec specifically designed for professional video recording and post-production. It exclusively uses technologies that have been known for over 20 years, with the aim of offering a completely royalty-free codec. In contrast to modern codecs, APV exclusively uses conventional coding algorithms that were published between the early 1980s and the late 1990s.
The APV codec standard offers the following features:
Perceptibly lossless video quality ("visually lossless") that is intended to be close to RAW. This is demonstrated, among other things, by the fact that the image quality does not significantly deteriorate even with multiple decoding and re-encoding.
Low complexity of the algorithms with high throughput at the same time. (It is a pure intra-frame coding without pixel domain prediction).
Support for content with 2K, 4K and 8K resolution with bit rates up to several Gbit/s.
Frame tiling for immersive content and to enable parallel encoding and decoding.
Support for various chroma sampling formats from 4:2:2 to 4:4:4 and color depths from 10 to 16 bits.
Integrated support for multi-view video as well as alpha, Z-buffer and reduced preview.
There has been a reference implementation on GitHub for some time (github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openapv?tab=readme-ov-file). However, things are only now picking up speed because Android 16 now supports the APV codec and it can also be used with the Blackmagic Camera App (www.slashcam.de/news/single/Blackmagic-Camera-Android-2-2-bringt-Cloud-Sync--A-19284.html).
Whether this codec can hold its own against DNxHR and/or ProRes remains to be seen. In addition to quality, its performance is likely to be decisive. Here, Apple already has a similar advantage with its ProRes hardware acceleration as Blackmagic with its BRAW optimization for GPU decoding.
On the other hand, there is a certain pro-codec gap to be filled, especially for Android-based cameras, into which APV might fit well. One of the biggest supporters of the format is Samsung, who can certainly be assumed to have an interest in an Android solution.
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