A creator sees AV1 praised as the better codec.
The word newer starts to sound like a setting. Choose it, wait a little longer, receive a better video.
It isn’t that simple.
A codec can save data.
It can’t make an older device understand a format it was never built to decode.
Start with the one nobody argues about.
H.264 is less efficient than everything that followed it. A clean 4K H.264 stream asks for a lot of bandwidth.
It is also the codec that decodes in hardware on essentially every device in use, from an aging laptop to a budget phone.
H.264 spends more to reach more.
That is why it is still the baseline.
HEVC makes the opposite trade. It carries the same perceptual quality in roughly half the data.
For Apple devices, Safari, and physical 4K discs, it is the format expected of you.
VP9 arrives at similar efficiency by another route, and it is what carries efficient video to Android and Chrome.
Neither one is simply the next H.264.
They divide the world between them.
A platform that wants efficient delivery to both may encode the same source twice, in HEVC and in VP9.
It pays twice in encoding time and storage so the viewer doesn’t pay in failed playback.
You see one upload.
The delivery system may need several codec versions before anyone presses play.
AV1 promises a cleaner version of that trade. Meaningfully smaller than HEVC and VP9 at the same perceptual quality, and dramatically smaller than H.264.
For a platform, less data makes a high-quality rendition practical on a connection that couldn’t carry one before.
For a creator, the gain arrives first as a cost.
Software AV1 encoding began orders of magnitude slower than HEVC encoding.
That put it in video on demand rather than live delivery, because a live encoder does not get unlimited time to make the next segment.
Hardware acceleration moves that line without erasing it.
Dedicated circuitry on a CPU or GPU encodes and decodes far faster, and on far less power, than general-purpose software.
Recent GPUs ship with AV1 encoders. Recent phone silicon ships with AV1 decoding.
One makes an AV1 export practical. The other keeps AV1 playback from emptying a battery.
Both matter.
Neither gives an older device a decoder it doesn’t have.
So don’t stop at the codec name.
Look at the profile and the level behind it.
A profile decides which features a stream is allowed to use, including 10-bit colour.
A level sets the ceiling: how large a frame, how fast a frame rate, how high a bitrate.
A device can have an AV1 decoder and still refuse a 4K, 10-bit, high-frame-rate AV1 stream.
The same trap sits under the safe choice. A television can support H.264 and still reject a High Profile file that sits above the level it implements.
Compatibility isn’t a badge on the box.
It is an agreement between one exact stream and one exact device.
Which is the whole difficulty with picking a codec by reputation.
The upload is one link in a chain: encoder, package, manifest, player, device, connection.
A source can arrive as AV1 and be turned into other renditions anyway, because the platform decides what it encodes and offers.
The rendition that reaches a viewer is not the newest codec available.
It is the one the platform made and the device can keep playing.
So the useful question was never whether AV1 wins a comparison chart.
It is whether its advantage survives everything downstream of you.
Use H.264 when broad reach is the decision that matters.
Use HEVC or VP9 when the platform and the devices you are actually aiming at can spend their efficiency.
Use AV1 when a smaller file at equal quality is worth its encoding cost and the hardware around it can carry the result.
Then keep a strong source apart from the delivery export, whichever name is on it.
Newer may make a file smaller.
The best codec is the one the whole delivery chain can actually use.