updated
Sep 15, 2026
857KB
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OpenAPV is the free reference encoder and decoder for APV, the visually lossless video format Samsung built for professional recording and gave to the Academy Software Foundation, with no installer and no interface of any kind.
OpenAPV is the reference encoder and decoder for APV, a video format built for recording and editing rather than for sending finished video to anyone.
Samsung wrote it, opened the source, and handed it to the Academy Software Foundation, which looks after a good deal of the film industry's shared software.
You can download OpenAPV 1.1.1.0 here, as long as you know that what arrives is a set of tools rather than something that makes APV files play.
What Is Actually in the Download
The Windows build is one small zip with no installer and no window of any kind. Four things are inside it, and only two of them matter to most people.
- oapv_app_enc.exe - the encoder, which turns raw video frames into an APV file.
- oapv_app_dec.exe - the decoder, which turns an APV file back into raw frames rather than into anything watchable.
- liboapv.dll - the codec itself, for other software that wants to read or write APV.
- Headers, libraries and a pkg-config file - developer material you can ignore unless you are writing code.
It is 64-bit only, and it is unusually self-contained. Both programs ask Windows for nothing beyond the system libraries every PC already has, so there is no Visual C++ runtime to hunt down first and nothing to install at all - unzip it and it runs.
If you have met dav1d or the AOM AV1 Encoder before, this will feel familiar. A reference implementation exists to prove a format works and to give everyone else something to build against, not to be friendly about it.
What APV Does That H.264 and HEVC Do Not
An ordinary delivery codec stores one full frame and then describes the next several dozen as a list of changes to it, which is how a two-hour film fits on a phone.
APV never does that. Every single frame is stored whole and complete, on its own, with nothing borrowed from its neighbours.
That is what makes it an editing format rather than a viewing one. Drag the playhead anywhere and the frame is simply there, with nothing to rebuild first, and a cut lands exactly where you put it.
Each frame is also divided into tiles that encode and decode independently of one another. That is how a phone manages this at 4K without catching fire, and it is why a workstation can decode only the part of the picture it actually needs.
The format carries 10, 12 and 16-bit video in 4:2:2, 4:4:4 and 4:4:4:4, which is the colour headroom a grade needs and far more than a delivery codec bothers with. Its specification was published as RFC 9924 in February 2026 and allows for bitrates of a few gigabits per second at 2K, 4K and 8K.
The trade: APV is not trying to make your files small, and it will not. Samsung's own claim when it opened the code was around 20 percent less storage than other professional recording formats, which is the comparison that matters here - against the H.264 clip your phone normally produces, an APV recording is enormous. You record in it, you edit in it, and you export something else.
It Will Not Make an APV File Play
This is worth saying plainly, because the word codec in a download title suggests otherwise.
Nothing in this package registers itself with Windows, and installing it changes nothing about what your media player can open. The decoder writes raw frames to disk in files far larger than the ones that went in, which is useful for testing software against the specification and useless for watching anything.
The tool that actually solves that problem is FFmpeg, which has decoded APV since version 8.0 and reads both bare APV streams and APV carried inside an MP4. One command converts a clip into something anything can open.
Players will pick APV up as their own bundled copy of FFmpeg catches up, and not before, so the honest advice is to test yours rather than assume. That applies to VLC Media Player and MPC-BE alike.
If you are not certain what you are holding in the first place, MediaInfo names the codec inside a file in about two seconds, and the site's own Codec Checker does the same job in a browser tab.
| What you want to do | What to use | Use this when |
|---|---|---|
| Watch an APV clip today | FFmpeg, converting it to H.264 or HEVC first | Always, unless your player already opens it |
| Edit APV footage | DaVinci Resolve | You are grading or cutting, not just viewing |
| Find out what is in a file | MediaInfo or the Codec Checker | First, whenever a file refuses to open |
| Encode something to APV | OpenAPV, or FFmpeg built with libopenapv | You are mastering or testing, never delivering |
| Make a small file to send someone | An HEVC or AV1 encoder | The footage is finished and leaving your machine |
If you have a codec pack installed, it does not change this answer. K-Lite Codec Pack and LAV Filters both decode through FFmpeg, so their APV support arrives with their next FFmpeg update rather than from anything here.
Where APV Files Come From
Almost all of them come from one place. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the first phone to record in APV, where it sits in the pro video mode rather than in the normal camera app.
On the desktop, DaVinci Resolve has handled APV since version 20.2, which is the shortest route from a phone recording to a finished grade without converting anything in between.
The closest thing Windows already had to this is Apple ProRes RAW, which answers the same question from the camera end - keep the quality and the colour headroom now, worry about file size later. APV covers the same ground with no licence attached to it, which is a large part of the appeal.
Running the Encoder and the Decoder
Both programs take one file in and write one file out, and neither of them will open an ordinary MP4. The encoder wants raw YCbCr at 10-bit or better, or a .y4m file, which is the easier way in because FFmpeg writes those for you.
A minimal encode is oapv_app_enc -i input.y4m -o encoded.apv and the reverse is oapv_app_dec -i encoded.apv -o output.y4m. Everything beyond that is options, and --help on either program lists them.
For quality control there are two approaches: a constant quality setting, which is the sane default for mastering, or an average bitrate target where something downstream needs a predictable size. If the difference between those words is fuzzy, our explainer on encoding and decoding is worth five minutes.
Once you have encoded something, Netflix VMAF will tell you how much quality the result actually kept, which is the only honest way to compare two settings.
What Is New in 1.1.1.0
This release, published on 15 September 2026, opens the 1.x line and is mostly an interface change for software that uses the codec rather than a change to the video it produces.
The decoder gained a way to decode a single tile instead of a whole frame, which is what makes smooth scrubbing through 8K possible in an editor. A new set of profiles drops the old constraints on tile size, so a file can be cut into smaller pieces and spread across more processor cores.
The rest is speed work on Intel and AMD processors and on Apple silicon, plus a long list of robustness fixes for malformed files. Nothing here changes how you use the two programs.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
Here is the tell, and you can check it without installing anything: look at the file extension on the clips you are trying to open.
If they are ordinary MP4 or MOV files from a normal camera app, APV is not involved anywhere in your problem and this download will not help you. A codec pack or a player that carries its own decoders is what you want, and PotPlayer is a reasonable place to start.
If your goal is smaller files rather than better ones, you want an encoder pointed the other way - x265 or SVT-AV1 for the command line.
And if the command line is the part putting you off, HandBrake and Shutter Encoder do the everyday conversion jobs with buttons instead, though neither of them writes APV.
For everything else in this corner of the site, the Video Codecs category collects the encoders and decoders worth having, and our roundup of the best free video codecs for HD streaming covers the delivery side properly.
Quick questions
Is OpenAPV free?
Yes, completely. It is open source under the BSD 3-Clause licence, with no paid tier, no trial period and no registration, and the APV format itself is royalty-free.
Do I need this to play an APV file?
No, and it will not help. Use FFmpeg to convert the clip to H.264 or HEVC, or open it in a player whose bundled FFmpeg is new enough to decode APV.
Does it install anything or need a runtime?
Neither. There is no installer, and the two programs need nothing beyond the libraries Windows already ships, so unzipping the archive is the whole setup.
Will it run on 32-bit Windows?
No. The project publishes a 64-bit Windows build only, alongside macOS, Linux and source packages.
Which phones record in APV?
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the first, where the option lives in the pro video mode. Nothing else records it at the time of writing.
Is APV better than ProRes?
They are aimed at the same job and the honest answer is that it depends on what your software supports. APV is royalty-free and newer, ProRes is everywhere already, and your editing application usually settles the argument for you.
Download OpenAPV 1.1.1.0 and see what it makes of your footage, or tell us what you are using it for if APV is already part of your workflow.
