The announcement of the launchNew Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile flagship computing platformQualcomm also announced that this computing platform now supports Advanced Professional Video (APV) codecs for professional-grade video capture and post-production control. In a subsequent announcement, Qualcomm Vice President of Product Management Judd Heape explained that this codec specification was jointly developed by Qualcomm, Adobe, Google, ArcVideo, Company3, Blackmagic, Dolby, Samsung, and other industry players, and is available as open source. Its goal is to enable more efficient and flexible storage and access of professional video.
Since it is provided as an open source specification, Qualcomm hopes to work with more industry partners to promote the popularization of this specification and compete with the ProRes specification currently led by Apple, which is also provided in an open source form. It will also allow more software and devices to have more usage options besides the current H.265 specification that is used under paid licensing.
However, even though devices based on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile flagship computing platform will enter the market in the near future, devices that actually support APV encoding will not be released until 2026. Qualcomm explained that the reason is that the market still needs some time to adjust and prepare.
而APV編碼特性部分，除了能以相較ProRes減少10%的檔案大小存放影像資料，本身更支援4:4:4及4:2:2的10-bit影像格式，同時編碼率則約介於3Gbps至4Gbps之間，標榜能以更小佔用儲存空間形式紀錄更高色彩深度，並且維持更高效率的資料傳輸表現。
Qualcomm also emphasized its collaboration with Microsoft to enable more Windows PCs to support APV-encoded content. This means that by shooting video content on a Snapdragon-powered phone or other device that also supports APV, subsequent editing can be directly connected to a Windows PC, maintaining image presentation quality with the same encoding content, thereby establishing a more complete image production process and application ecosystem.
On the other hand, just as Apple introduced the ProRes format, allowing its products to adapt to most filming and professional production needs, thereby establishing a certain brand image in the market and generating a certain boost for subsequent product sales, Qualcomm has proposed the APV codec and made it available in an open source format. It is also collaborating with many ecosystem players to promote it, hoping to gain more influence and publicity in the market.
