Samsung just opened up its mobile video playbook. The company released its APV (Advanced Professional Video) codec as open source alongside the Galaxy S26 Ultra launch in March, marking a rare move to standardize compression tech across the industry. The IETF-approved codec cuts file sizes by over 10% while maintaining near-lossless quality through multiple editing rounds – directly challenging Apple’s ProRes dominance in professional mobile workflows.

Samsung is betting that giving away its video technology will help it win the creator economy. The company’s newly released APV codec, which debuted on the Galaxy S26 Ultra in March, represents a strategic shift – instead of keeping proprietary tech locked down, Samsung open-sourced the entire standard to encourage industry adoption.

The move comes as mobile video creation explodes beyond traditional professionals. “As more expert-level users such as YouTubers and influencers emerge, we wanted to lower the barriers to entry for video production, which has traditionally required access to professional equipment,” Sunmi Yoo from Samsung’s Visual Solution Team told Samsung Newsroom in an exclusive interview.

APV tackles a fundamental problem with conventional video codecs – they lose data every time you compress and re-edit footage. Traditional workflows see noticeable quality degradation after just a few editing passes. Samsung’s approach preserves image data through YUV 4:2:2 color sampling, delivering what the team calls “visually lossless” quality even after multiple rounds of editing. At the same quality level, APV shrinks file sizes by more than 10% compared to similar codecs.

But bringing a standardized codec to market required navigating entirely different challenges than lab development. “Moving from standardization to commercialization was a challenge on a completely different level,” explained Junseang Min, also from the Visual Solution Team. The team had to solve for real-time processing of UHD and 8K video within the thermal and power constraints of mobile devices.

The numbers reveal the scale of the challenge – UHD 30fps footage recorded in APV can reach up to 6GB per minute. That kind of sustained data throughput pushed Samsung to coordinate across business units. The team partnered with Samsung’s Memory Business to validate portable SSD models, running more than nine test cycles across all recording resolutions on the Galaxy S26 Ultra to ensure stable data transfer under high-load conditions.