How Meta brought AV1 to Reels

This post details Meta's successful integration and deployment of the AV1 video codec for Facebook and Instagram Reels. It outlines the technical rationale for choosing AV1, highlighting its superior compression efficiency (approx. 30% better than VP9/HEVC) and royalty-free nature. The post delves into the optimization of AV1 software encoders (specifically SVT-AV1) and decoders (dav1d), benchmarking their performance against other codecs and demonstrating significant improvements in quality-to-bitrate ratios. It also describes the advanced Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) encoding strategy using convex hull optimization and a two-stage hybrid hardware/software approach to balance encoding speed and quality. The challenges and solutions for client-side decoding, particularly on mobile devices without hardware AV1 support, are also discussed.