> Is this intended to be competitive with h.266/VVC? And is it?
Yes:
> VVC is not alone in the video coding race. AV1, backed by AOMedia, has already gained traction, although its performance does not make it a direct competitor to VVC in high-end applications. The upcoming AV2, as well as AI-driven encoding techniques, could pose challenges to VVC’s success. Nevertheless, VVC’s strong technical foundation, industry support, and clear intellectual property structure position it as a promising long-term solution for video coding.
> For businesses focused on reducing operational costs, this is a key point in the h.266 vs av1 debate. While the H.266/VVC codec offers powerful compression improvements over h.265, AV1—and eventually AV2—may be more attractive thanks to simpler licensing and long-term affordability.
In terms of pure compression ratio AV1 compete mostly with h265/HVEC in most cases. It does perform pretty well for low bitrate and specific situation like synthetic noise, but h265 is usually better for higher bitrate situations. Hopefully, AV2 will be able to compete with the future H267.
But to be honest, video codec have gotten so good these days, I just hope that we get a reasonably fast open-source encoder. AV1 and HVEC can already turn a 50Go bluray into an almost visually lossless 5~3Go file.
VVC is better than AV1 even before massive amount of tuning. The actual VVC spec including conformance finished in 2022. While for AV1 was 2018.
And H.267 ECM is miles ahead of AV2. There are not even in the same category as AOM has stated AV2 intends for 1080P and efficiency. While ECM at its current form is 50x to 100x slower than VVC encode, and 8 - 10x slower to decode. I am not even sure if it will ever be useable.
Yes:
> VVC is not alone in the video coding race. AV1, backed by AOMedia, has already gained traction, although its performance does not make it a direct competitor to VVC in high-end applications. The upcoming AV2, as well as AI-driven encoding techniques, could pose challenges to VVC’s success. Nevertheless, VVC’s strong technical foundation, industry support, and clear intellectual property structure position it as a promising long-term solution for video coding.
* https://www.nokia.com/blog/the-future-of-video-compression-i...
> For businesses focused on reducing operational costs, this is a key point in the h.266 vs av1 debate. While the H.266/VVC codec offers powerful compression improvements over h.265, AV1—and eventually AV2—may be more attractive thanks to simpler licensing and long-term affordability.
* https://www.dacast.com/blog/h266-vvc-versatile-video-coding/
Not qualified to answer.