AV2 Is In R&D As The Eventual Successor To The AV1 Video Codec

While AV1 adoption is still taking off and finally seeing desktop hardware with AV1 decode, given the time it takes to develop a new high-end video codec it shouldn't come as too much surprise that "AV2" is already being explored.

A Phoronix reader tipped us off this morning that the aomedia.org roadmap for the Alliance for Open Media industry consortium that spearheads AV1 has already started with "R&D for AV2 has begun in earnest."

There is also already a AV2 video codec page on their site albeit blank for now.

This royalty-free video codec only reached 1.0 status in early 2019. Adoption around AV1 continues to grow, more hardware is adding encode/decode abilities, and there is also the likes of AVIF in making use of AV1 for image formats and that support is now becoming more widespread within web browsers. By all indications AV1 seems to be doing great but as it's a multi-year effort when working on new high-end video coding technologies, it's understandable that industry stakeholders may already be performing research and development on what will ultimately be AV2 down the line.