 | |
| Abbreviation | AOMedia, AOM |
|---|---|
| Formation | September 1, 2015; 10 years ago (2015-09-01) |
| Founder | Amazon,Cisco,Google,Intel,Microsoft,Mozilla,Netflix[1] |
| Type | Industry consortium |
| Purpose | Development of aroyalty-free video format |
| Headquarters | Wakefield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Products | |
| Members | 53 (2021) |
Parent organization | Joint Development Foundation |
| Website | aomedia |
TheAlliance for Open Media (AOMedia) is anon-profit industry consortium headquartered inWakefield, Massachusetts, and formed to developopen,royalty-free technology for multimedia delivery. It uses the ideas and principles of openweb standard development to create video standards that can serve as alternatives to the hitherto dominant standards of theMoving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).[2][3][4]
Its first project was to developAV1, a newopenvideo codec and format, as a successor toVP9 and an alternative toHEVC.[1] AV1 uses elements fromDaala,Thor, andVP10, three preceding open video codecs.
The governing members of the Alliance for Open Media areAmazon,Apple,Cisco,Google,Intel,Meta Platforms,Microsoft,Mozilla,Netflix,Nvidia,Samsung Electronics andTencent.[5]
Some collaboration and work that would later be merged into AV1 predates the official launch of the Alliance.[2]
Following the successful standardization of anaudio standard in theInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2012, a working group for the standardization of a royalty-free video format began to form under the lead of members of theXiph.Org Foundation,[6] who had begun working on their experimental video formatDaala back in 2010.[7] In May 2015, the Internet Video Codec working group (NetVC) of the IETF was officially started and presented with coding techniques from Daala.[8] Cisco Systems joined forces and offered their own prototype formatThor to the working group on July 22.[9]
The lack of a suitable video format for inclusion in the specification ofHTML video by theWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C)[10] and the failed negotiations for one mandatory video format forWebRTC showed the need for a competitive, open video standard.
The emergence of a second patent pool for HEVC (HEVC Advance) in spring 2015 provided motivation for investments in an alternative video format and grew support for the Alliance, mainly due to the uncertainty regarding royalties forMPEG's next-generation video format, HEVC.[11]
On September 1, 2015, the Alliance for Open Media was announced with the goal of developing a royalty-free video format as an alternative to licensed formats such asH.264 andHEVC.[12][1] The founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix.[1] The plan was to release the video format by 2017.[1][13]
The alliance saw expansion of its member list since inception. On April 5, 2016, the Alliance for Open Media announced thatAMD,ARM, andNvidia had joined, andAdobe,Ateme,Ittiam andVidyo joined in the months following. On November 13, 2017,Facebook later joined as a governing member.[14] In January 2018 the alliance's website was quietly updated to addApple as a governing member of the alliance.[15] On April 3, 2019,Samsung Electronics joined as a governing member.[16] October 1, 2019,Tencent joined as a governing member.[17]
In 2018, the founder and chairman of the MPEG acknowledged the Alliance to be the biggest threat to their business model, furthermore stating that:[18]
Alliance for Open Media has occupied the void created by MPEG’s outdated video compression standard (AVC), absence of competitive [royalty free] standards (IVC) and unusable modern standard (HEVC)... Everybody realises that the old MPEG business model is now broke.
Articles suggested that Google was in planning to release 2 open formats, High-dynamic-range video/HDR video and 3D audio, as alternatives to Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision video technology. A draft called IAC has been developed for audio, and Samsung's HDR10+ will not be utilized.[19]During September 2022, AOMedia announced Project Caviar. Although the name is yet to be disclosed, the announcement was made public through a journal authored by AOMedia developers and biographies shared on the doc: and after a month papers calls were released with an early draft.[20] The Video Codec Working Group (CWG) was the first AOMedia technical group. Recognizing some needs, AOMedia created, in February 2022, the Volumetric Visual Media Working Group (VVMWG). In June 2022, 10 universities and 24 organizations (companies) went to Alliance for Open Media Symposium,[21] with various engineers working on AV1 and developing the new technologies in the cwg incubators gains test for the Next Generation AOM standard. There are in the alliance efforts done through different working groups.[22] AVM: AOM Video Model - was created in the AOMedia GitLab repository. It consists of tools based on research candidate. AVM is the software codebase that AOMedia is using for its research and development of the next generation video coding technologies. The development happens in stages, and each new anchor is the codebase in which previously adopted experiments have been integrated and which is used in the following round of the experiments.[23][24][25] - this repo based on Libaom, reference encoder for AV1 format.[26]
During June 2023, AOMedia announced thatZoom Video Communications would become a promoter member.[27]
AOMedia's first project was the creation of an open video compression format and codec optimized forstreaming media over the internet, intended for both commercial and non-commercial content, includinguser-generated content. The format is intended to be the first in a line of new, AOMedia Video (AV) formats being developed.[28]
AOMedia planned for the first version of its format (AV1) to be completed before the end of 2017.[29] However, work on the bitstream specification will be continued into 2018.[30] The format is the primary contender for standardisation by the video coding standard working groupNetVC of theInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF).[31]
The main distinguishing features of AV1 are its purportedroyalty-free licensing terms and performance. AV1 is specifically designed forreal-time applications and for higher resolutions than typical usage scenarios of the current generation (H.264) of video formats.[32]
In 2019, Sisvel International formed apatent pool for selling licenses to intellectual property it anticipates will be necessary to comply with theAV1 standard. AOMedia said this was contrary to its goal of a standard developed entirely with free, donated technology owned by the organization. Sisvel anticipates AV1 will require patented technology developed outside the AOMedia member organizations.[33]
The Alliance is incorporated in the US as a tax-exempt non-profit organization and a subsidiary "project" of the independentJoint Development Foundation (JDF), also headquartered in Wakefield.
The Alliance intends to release new video codecs asfree software under theBSD 2-Clause License. It adopted the patent rules of theW3C[3] which mandate technology contributors to disclose all patents that may be relevant and to agree to a royalty-free patent license.[34] The Alliance's patent license contains adefensive termination clause to discourage patent lawsuits.
Software development happens in the open[28] using a public source code repository[32] andissue tracking system, and welcomes contributions from the general public. Contributions have to pass internal reviews and gain consensus for their adoption. Different sub-groups inside the Alliance handle testing,[35] reviews forIPR/patent problems[3][35] hardware-friendliness,[35] and editing of specification documents.[36]
There are two levels of membership: organizations can join as an ordinary member, or as a governing member with a seat on the board of directors. Confusingly, these are dubbed "founding members" in AOM terminology, although they need not be members since the Alliance was founded.
There is a broad representation of the video industry among the Alliance members, featuring several hardware, software, and content producers,OTT video distributors, providers of real-time conferencing solutions, and browser vendors. Several AOM members have previously worked on MPEG's HEVC and hold patents to it (e.g. BBC, Intel, Cisco, Vidyo, Apple, Microsoft, and Broadcom[37]).
As of October 2025:[5]
As of November 2023:[5]