AVIF is based on AV1, a modern video format developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). Mozilla is also a member of it. Firefox 86 will be the first browser version with the official AVIF support.
AV1 is the latest and greatest of the open video formats. It is designed as a successor to VP9, that competes directly with the proprietary (and costly) HEVC/H.265 codec. It is intended to be paired with the Opus audio codec in a WebM container for HTML5 web video. It is royalty free and backed by a number of industry giants (Amazon, AMD, Apple, Arm, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, etc.), who together formed the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). AV1 meant to be a successor to the VP9 codec developed by Google, without relying on any MPEG patents.
AVIF (Image format)
AVIF stands for AV1 Image File Format and is an image format based on AV1. It is also developed and curated by AOMedia. Similarly, AVIF also allows having smaller file sizes for images than traditional JPG or competing WebP while maintaining the great picture quality .
If you are tracking Firefox development, you may be remember that Firefox 77 was first introduced the ability to enable the AVIF support.
This change is now coming to the stable branch of the Firefox browser, with version 86. In that version, support for AVIF will be activated by default. If Mozilla will follow its own schedule, Firefox 86 will be released on February 23, 2021.
AVIF is becoming more and more popular. Many services and various apps add its support, including the popular open source GIMP image editor.
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