Evaluate AV1 encoder options and real-world device/browser compatibility before committing to AV1 as a primary delivery codec

Steps

1. Choose an AV1 software encoder based on your speed/quality tradeoff: SVT-AV1 (originally built by Intel with Netflix, now AOMedia's reference next-generation encoder) offers roughly 2-5x the encoding speed of libaom at similar quality and scales well across many CPU cores, while libaom remains available in FFmpeg as a slower, often higher-quality reference implementation
2. Where available, use hardware AV1 encoding on modern discrete GPUs (e.g., Intel Arc, NVIDIA RTX 40/50-series) for production-scale encoding throughput, understanding hardware encoders generally trade some quality-per-bit for speed compared to SVT-AV1 in software
3. Check browser decode support before assuming universal client compatibility: AV1 is broadly supported in current Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Samsung Internet, but Safari's AV1 support is limited to specific newer Apple silicon (e.g., M3-class Macs, M4 iPad Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 families) - older Apple devices running a current Safari version still lack an AV1 decoder
4. Check hardware decode support on target device fleets, since AV1 hardware decode is now common in newer flagship mobile chipsets (recent Qualcomm Snapdragon 8-series and X Elite) but is inconsistent or absent on older or lower-end devices, which fall back to slow software decode or fail entirely
5. Keep an H.264 (and likely HEVC) fallback rendition in your ABR ladder for any client that can't decode AV1, since AV1-only delivery will exclude a meaningful share of older devices
6. Re-verify current browser and hardware support figures against up-to-date sources before finalizing a codec strategy, since AV1 device/browser coverage has continued to expand and specific version cutoffs change over time