Advanced Professional Video

Samsung's Advanced Professional Video (APV) is a royalty-free video codec made by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd to be used for professional-level high-quality video recording and post production.

Advanced Professional Video
Abbreviation	APV
Organization	Samsung Electronics
Authors	Youngkwon Lim Minwoo Park Madhukar Budagavi Rajan Joshi Kwang Pyo Choi
Domain	Video compression
Website	www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-lim-apv-07.html

Features

• Perceptually lossless video quality that is close to the original, uncompressed quality
• Low complexity and high throughput intra frame only coding without pixel domain prediction^[1]
• Real-time encoding and decoding at resolutions up to 8K
• Designed as an intermediate codec for video editing, not for content distribution.^[2]
• Optimized for parallel processing on multi-core CPUs and GPUs
• High-quality chroma subsampling (4:0:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4, and 4:4:4:4).^[1]
• Bit depths ranging from 10 to 16.^[1]
• High bit-rates up to a few Gbps for 2K, 4K and 8K resolution content, enabled by a lightweight entropy coding scheme^[1]
• Frame tiling for immersive content and for enabling parallel encoding and decoding
• Multiple decoding and re-encoding without severe visual quality degradation
• Various metadata including HDR10/10+ and user-defined format

Technical specification

The Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec is defined as an intra‑frame, visually lossless compression format intended for professional recording, editing, and mastering. It encodes each frame independently using block‑based transforms and lightweight entropy coding, avoiding inter‑frame prediction to ensure low latency and predictable performance in post‑production workflows. The design emphasizes perceptual fidelity close to uncompressed video, with support for high bit‑rates up to several gigabits per second at 2K, 4K, and 8K resolutions. APV accommodates chroma subsampling formats from 4:0:0 through 4:4:4:4, including alpha channel support, and bit depths from 10 to 16 bits per component. Profiles are currently defined for 10‑bit and 12‑bit operation, with compatibility for wide‑gamut and high‑dynamic‑range color spaces. A tile‑based frame structure enables parallel encoding and decoding, improving throughput for immersive content and multi‑core processing environments. The intra‑only design allows multiple re‑encoding cycles with minimal cumulative degradation, while localized coding boundaries provide resilience against error propagation.

Adoption and implementations

Reference implementation

• OpenAPV ^[3]

Adoption

• Android 16^[4]
• Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve^[5]
• FFmpeg^[6]
• Blackmagic Design Camera for Android^[7]

• Integrated into Samsung Galaxy flagship devices starting with Galaxy S26.
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

See also

• Apple ProRes
• DNxHR codec
• CineForm