[Editorial] How APV Is Elevating Mobile Video to Professional Standards

The era of filmmaking with a mobile phone has arrived. As anyone can now shoot, edit and share high-quality video, users increasingly expect greater color accuracy, finer detail and more post-production flexibility. In response, Samsung Electronics has developed the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec and is working to establish it as a global open standard.

Why APV

Codecs may be unfamiliar to many consumers, but they act as invisible engines shaping the user experience. Think of a suitcase — how you pack it determines how much it holds and how easily you can find what you need. Likewise, an efficient codec enables a user to store more high-quality video while improving playback and editing.

Video falls into two categories — casual video, everyday clips we capture and share, and professional video for cinema-grade editing. While casual codecs prioritize compression efficiency, professional codecs must preserve image quality and reproduce colors with precision. Just as overpacking a suitcase can damage or distort its contents, professional video requires a robust codec that preserves every detail.

Conventional compression makes it difficult to fully enable mobile post-production — including color grading, where creators apply precise tones to match their artistic vision, and visual effects (VFX). APV was designed to support the entire workflow from capture to final edit while preserving detail even after multiple rounds of recompression.

Reducing Complexity Without Compromise

The biggest technical challenge was reducing complexity. Conventional professional codecs focus on image quality, making them computationally demanding and limiting use to high-end hardware. The goal was to achieve a low-complexity design that mobile processors could handle in real time without compromising quality.

To address this, Samsung introduced lightweight entropy coding¹ to reduce computational load and frame tiling² that enables parallel encoding and decoding across multiple cores. As a result, APV supports real-time processing of up to 8K video on mobile phones while maintaining image quality with minimal loss, even after multiple edits.

Building an Open Ecosystem for All

The value of technology lies in how widely it is used. Samsung chose to build an open ecosystem where anyone can adopt and advance the technology. It’s like sharing a great recipe — leading to even better results.

In February 2026, Samsung published APV through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as RFC 9924, establishing it as a de facto global standard. The company also released the full source code on GitHub under the name “OpenAPV,” enabling developers worldwide to participate and contribute.

This openness is driving ecosystem growth and accelerating adoption. The APV codec is supported in Android 16, while the open-source tool FFmpeg and post-production software DaVinci Resolve have also added support.

Collaborating Across Global Teams

This progress was driven by Samsung’s global research collaboration. After Samsung Research (SR) led early development, teams across Samsung Research America (SRA), Samsung R&D Institute India-Bangalore (SRI-B), Samsung R&D Institute Poland (SRPOL) and Samsung R&D Institute Japan (SRJ) worked closely together. Their efforts led to a key milestone in October 2023, when APV was unveiled at the Samsung Developer Conference (SDC). In August 2024, Samsung joined the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) to support the open-source video ecosystem.

To bring the technology to mobile phones, the Mobile eXperience (MX) Business spearheaded product integration. Close collaboration between MX and SR optimized performance for mobile. In February 2026, Samsung equipped Galaxy S26 Ultra with APV — the first Android phone to support the codec.

Expanding Creative Possibilities for All

Our goal is clear. We aim to make professional-grade video production accessible to everyone through APV. Technology delivers its greatest value when it is open, and APV will shape a more creative future for video content.

1. A technique that reduces computational complexity, enabling the mobile phone’s application processor to operate more efficiently. ↩︎
2. A method that divides a large video frame into smaller segments, allowing them to be processed simultaneously. ↩︎