Netflix Now Exploring AVIF For Image Compression

Following Netflix's AV1 adoption with collaborating with Intel on the SVT-AV1 encoder, now using AV1 streaming for Android users, and others around this advanced royalty-free video codec, Netflix is now exploring AVIF as their next-gen image format.

AVIF is the AV1 Image File Format that reached v1.0 last year and is based on AV1 design concepts while using the HEIF file format. Netflix has been toying with AVIF going back to 2018 while this week they released more research firming up their interest in this image format.

Netflix acknowledges the significant need for next-gen image coding that has better compression efficiency and more features than JPEG. Netflix believes AVIF has the potential albeit they aren't yet ready to transition to AVIF today.

In their testing they are finding good results out of AVIF compared to JPEG and other image formats. For those wanting to go through a long and interesting technical read, on the Netflix Tech Blog they have example screenshots and results comparing their AVIF results to other formats.

Hopefully as we move on in 2020 we'll see increased adoption of AVIF, thus another blow to JPEG2000 as well.