Alibaba Cloud Joins the Alliance for Open Media
Strengthened collaboration with AOMedia to offer open, royalty-free and interoperable solutions for the next generation of video delivery
Wakefield, U.S.A, Sep 26, 2018 – Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, has joined the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) as a Promoter member. Alibaba Cloud will collaborate with AOMedia and other industry leaders in pursuit of an open and royalty-free AOMedia video codec, AV1.
AOMedia is a non-profit organization formed by the world's best-known leaders in video with the aim to define and develop media technologies that address the need for an open standard for video compression and delivery over the web. Its founding members include Amazon, Apple, Arm, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and NVIDIA.
"We're excited to welcome Alibaba Cloud to the Alliance for Open Media, reflecting our joint commitment to leveraging the power of the Internet to engage with users and customers in a cutting-edge way as we release AV1," said Matt Frost, AOMedia Founding Board Member and Head of Strategy and Partnerships at Google. "We look forward to collaborating with Alibaba Cloud in our goal to increase openness and interoperability in internet video."
"Joining AOMedia enables us to promote the adoption of AV1 alongside our own goal of further enhancing our audiences' experiences from many aspects such as video live broadcasting, online video conference, online video games and entertainment. We look forward to working alongside AOMedia members to open up new possibilities for using AV1 royalty-free, cross-platform, online video across a wide range of applications," said Zhaoyuan Zhu, general manager of Alibaba Cloud's CDN and Digital Media.
"Alibaba Cloud has long been an advocate of open standards and knowledge-sharing. By continuously contributing to the open-source community and collaborating with members in the community on source code development, we can continue to share our best experiences and make our technology inclusive," Zhu added.
The availability of AV1, AOMedia's newest initiative, as an open-source codec is a significant milestone in the ability to deliver a next-generation video format that is interoperable, open, optimized for internet delivery and scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth. AV1 enables more screens to display the vivid images, deeper colors, brighter highlights, darker shadows, and other enhanced UHD (Ultra High Definition) imaging features that consumers and businesses have come to expect – all while using less data.
Designed at the outset for hardware optimization, the AV1 specification, reference code, and bindings are available for tool-makers and developers to begin designing AV1 into products. Specifically, the release of AV1 includes:
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Bitstream specification to enable the next generation of silicon
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Unoptimized, experimental software decoder and encoder to create and consume the bitstream
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Reference streams for product validation
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Binding specifications to allow content creation and streaming tools for user-generated and commercial video
About Alibaba Cloud
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com), the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, is among the world's top three IaaS providers, according to Gartner, and the largest provider of public cloud services in China, according to IDC. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, start-ups, corporations and government organizations. Alibaba Cloud is the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee.
About the Alliance for Open Media
Launched in 2015, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) was formed to define and develop media technologies to address marketplace demand for an open standard for video compression and delivery over the web. Board-level, Founding Members include Amazon, Apple, Arm, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, NVIDIA, and Samsung Electronics. AOMedia's open-source, royalty-free, video codec AV1 is a significant milestone in the ability to deliver a next-generation video format that is interoperable, open, optimized for internet delivery and scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth. Visit