Meta’s Video Encoding Expert David Ronca (who will remind you about the Technical Emmy he won while spearheading Netflix’s encoding team), was at Mile High Video 2025 presenting VCAT (Video Codec Acid Test) – a mobile video decoder benchmarking tool.
The social media company has set an ambitious goal of “AV1 for all” by 2028, identifying that 85% of all Android devices will be capable of running AV1-encoded streams. But with hardware support moving at a glacial pace, software decoding is the only way forward, and Meta is all-in.
Ronca admits that industry expectations for hardware AV1 decoding were overly optimistic. Today, only 10% of Android devices (and zero iPhones) ship with AV1 hardware decoders, and adoption is creeping forward.
This means that software decoding is inevitable. The problem is that many still fear that software decoding will drain batteries or fry devices.
Ronca argues that AV1 is actually well-suited for software playback, particularly when constrained by real-world device capabilities.
Meta and Ittiam have developed VCAT to assess real-world AV1 decoding performance across devices. Built on VLC, VCAT will be open-source (eventually) and will track key metrics across hardware and software decoders.
Testing so far has revealed key insights:
- Best-case AV1 support shows that about 85% of Android devices can handle software AV1 decoding, assuming an ARM v8 processor, 64-bit Android 12+, at least four cores, and sub-12nm processor.
- Battery drain is a concern for weaker devices, especially at 1080p. A 720p fallback could be a compromise.
- Thermal events must be zero. Meta insists that software decoding can’t overheat devices—something device makers and SoC vendors will need to tune.
To hit its 2028 goal, Meta is taking a holistic AV1 deployment approach:
- Ecosystem-aware encoding – optimizing AV1 for software playback at scale.
- Decoder-friendly enhancements: Improvements to tools like SVT-AV1 to ease CPU load.
- Device profiling: VCAT will help probe devices to determine AV1 readiness.
Meta claims to have already cut AV1 decode costs by 25%, and with continued software optimizations, Ronca believes they can scale AV1 without prohibitive power consumption.
With hardware support failing to keep pace, software decoding is now the battleground, and VCAT could help content providers navigate the messy reality of codec deployment.
Meta says VCAT should be publicly available within a month.