We’re residing in an period the place anybody generally is a creator. As cellphones make it easy to seize high-quality video, what was as soon as for professionals has grow to be a part of on a regular basis life.
Samsung Electronics has independently developed the APV (Advanced Professional Video) codec, a expertise designed to allow high-quality video enhancing and has launched it as open supply. The codec made its debut on Galaxy S26 Ultra launched in March, setting a brand new benchmark for cell video creation. By preserving picture high quality whereas minimizing loss all through the enhancing course of, APV permits extra exact, professional-grade video manufacturing.
Samsung Newsroom sat down with builders from the Visual Solution Team of Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics to listen to the story behind APV, from technical challenges confronted in improvement to the pondering that formed it.
Q. What led to the event of the APV codec?
Yoo: Conventional video codecs expertise some knowledge loss throughout the compression course of required to scale back file measurement. In specific, because the repeated enhancing course of tends to end in noticeable degradation in picture high quality, a brand new codec has been developed to basically handle these limitations.
To this finish, we proposed a collaboration with Samsung Research. Samsung Research took the lead in standardizing APV, after which MX enterprise labored intently over the previous three years to make sure its assist as a part of the Android customary.
Q. What is the APV codec, and what are its key benefits?
Yoo: APV is a video codec that has been formally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It is optimized for enhancing, preserving as a lot knowledge as attainable whereas delivering wonderful compression effectivity relative to picture high quality. At the identical high quality degree, it could possibly cut back file measurement by greater than 10 % in comparison with related codecs.
Min: It additionally delivers refined shade copy based mostly on the YUV 4:2:2 and achieves visually lossless degree of picture high quality, whereas sustaining minimal degradation even after a number of rounds of enhancing.
Q. Why did you select to launch APV as open supply?
Yoo: We selected to develop APV as open supply to encourage wider adoption and to construct an ecosystem by means of standardization — finally bringing the expertise and its advantages to extra customers. No matter how superior a expertise is, if it isn’t extensively used, it turns into out of date.
Q. What have been the important thing priorities in implementing APV codec on a cell machine?
Min: Moving from standardization to commercialization was a problem on a very completely different degree. To allow real-time processing of UHD and 8K video throughout the constraints of cell gadgets, efforts have been centered on thermal administration and system-level optimization. With APV, UHD 30fps footage can attain as much as 6GB per minute, so we partnered with Samsung Electronics’ Memory Business to make sure knowledge storage stability. As a results of validating the newest Samsung moveable SSD fashions throughout all recording resolutions on Galaxy S26 Ultra over greater than 9 take a look at cycles, secure knowledge switch efficiency was secured even underneath high-load situations.
Yoo: Building the APV ecosystem additionally required shut collaboration with a variety of companions. We labored intently not solely with chipset producers, but additionally with firms growing enhancing instruments and video gamers.
Q. How does it really feel to see the APV codec debut on Galaxy S26 Ultra?
Yoo: As extra expert-level customers similar to YouTubers and influencers emerge, we needed to decrease the limitations to entry for video manufacturing, which has historically required entry to skilled tools. Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with 4 built-in cinematic LUTs (Look-Up Tables), and we hope this enables extra customers to simply create film-like visuals…
