SVT-AV1 Guide Details AV1 Encoding Presets for VOD, Storage, and Live

Optimizing AV1 encoding through SVT-AV1 presets offers critical control over content delivery economics, influencing both storage costs and streaming quality. As AV1 adoption expands across diverse platforms and content types, mastering these encoder settings becomes essential for balancing bandwidth efficiency with processing overhead. The trade-off between encode time and file size dictates strategic choices for VOD libraries, real-time live events, and overall infrastructure spend. Continued development and guides like this indicate an industry focus on refinement and practical implementation of advanced codecs.

SVT-AV1, originally an Intel and Netflix collaboration, has become the flagship project of the Alliance for Open Media's Software and Implementation Working Group (SIWG) since 2020 (AOMedia, 2026). Meta produces over 75% of its Facebook and Instagram AV1 video watch time using SVT-AV1, enabling high-quality short-form video (Reels) for the first time (AOMedia, 2026). Netflix reports that AV1 now powers approximately 30% of its total streaming, making it their second most-used codec and showing VMAF scores 4.3 points higher than AVC and 0.9 points higher than HEVC, while using one-third less bandwidth (Netflix Tech Blog, 2026). Netflix also productized AV1 Film Grain Synthesis (FGS) in July 2025, enabling cinematic film grain at significantly reduced bitrates—up to 66% lower (Netflix Tech Blog, 2026). SVT-AV1 4.0, released earlier this year, includes API updates, an extended CRF range to 70, and improved compute vs. compression efficiency, particularly for AVIF encoding (AOMedia, 2026). Over the past five years (2021-2025), 88% of large-screen devices submitted for Netflix certification have supported AV1, with almost all devices since 2023 being AV1-capable (Netflix Tech Blog, 2026). The AOMedia has also announced AV2 is slated for release by the end of 2025 (Netflix Tech Blog, 2026).