Red5 Pro v15.6.0 adds AV1 support with 50% better compression

The introduction of AV1 for ingest and egress targets the high compute costs of real-time software encoding, offering a royalty-free path to massive bandwidth savings in bandwidth-constrained environments like mobile. By supporting AV1 natively, Red5 Pro aligns with major infrastructure shifts led by the Alliance for Open Media, reflecting an ecosystem moving toward sub-second latency with next-generation efficiency. Concurrently, the resolution of GCP and S3 upload bugs addresses critical reliability gaps for enterprise hybrid-cloud deployments. Watch for adoption rates of AV1 in real-time communication (RTC) compared to traditional VOD, as software encoding efficiency gains like those seen in SVT-AV1 continue to lower the entry barrier for live workflows.

The shift toward AV1 has reached a critical tipping point in 2026 as the industry prioritizes CDN cost reduction. Per NetInt (July 2026), AV1 is now the fastest-growing codec in terms of planned deployment, with 57% of organizations projected to have it in production or on their roadmap by year-end. This momentum is driven by the codec's performance on major platforms; for example, Netflix confirmed earlier in 2026 that AV1 already powers roughly 30% of its global streams, while YouTube reported that over 75% of its playback now utilizes the format (January 2026).

Infrastructure providers are rapidly updating their stacks to support this transition. AOMedia recently signaled the next phase of this evolution by releasing the first specifications for AV2 in June 2026, promising an additional 30-40% efficiency gain over its predecessor. Simultaneously, hardware decode support has become nearly universal in the living room, with Netflix reporting that 88% of large-screen devices submitted for certification between 2021 and 2025 now include native AV1 playback capabilities (March 2026).

Despite the performance gains, 2026 remains a dual-codec era. Per 8K Association reporting (January 2026), while AV1 hardware decoding is ubiquitous on new mobile and TV chipsets, software encoding still poses a significant compute overhead compared to H.264. Consequently, services are moving toward a tiered strategy—serving AV1 to compatible modern devices to slash bandwidth costs while maintaining H.264 or HEVC fallbacks for legacy hardware. This architecture allows platforms to capture immediate CDN savings while ensuring 99.7% device reach (WebCodecs March 2026).