Encode video with AV1

AV1 produces files 30-50% smaller than h264 at comparable quality. The tradeoff is slower encoding — which is where parallel chunked encoding helps.

“Streamline” (a video hosting platform like Vimeo) wants to cut bandwidth costs without degrading quality.

API

ittybit video \
  -i https://streamline-app.com/uploads/talk.mov \
  --codec av1 \
  --format mp4 \
  --quality high \
  --cloud

const task = {
  input: "https://streamline-app.com/uploads/talk.mov",
  kind: "video",
  options: {
    codec: "av1",
    format: "mp4",
    quality: "high",
  },
};

const res = await fetch("https://api.ittybit.com/tasks", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.ITTYBIT_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify(task),
});
const data = await res.json();

import requests

task = {
    "input": "https://streamline-app.com/uploads/talk.mov",
    "kind": "video",
    "options": {
        "codec": "av1",
        "format": "mp4",
        "quality": "high",
    },
}

res = requests.post(
    "https://api.ittybit.com/tasks",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}"},
    json=task,
)
data = res.json()

TASK='{
  "input": "https://streamline-app.com/uploads/talk.mov",
  "kind": "video",
  "options": {
    "codec": "av1",
    "format": "mp4",
    "quality": "high"
  }
}'

curl -X POST https://api.ittybit.com/tasks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ITTYBIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$TASK"

CLI

ittybit video \
  -i talk.mov \
  -o talk-av1.mp4 \
  --codec av1 \
  --quality high

Codec comparison

Codec	Container	Browser support	File size	Encode speed
`h264`	mp4	Everything	Baseline	Fast
`h265`	mp4	Safari, Edge	~30% smaller	Medium
`vp9`	webm	Chrome, Firefox	~30% smaller	Medium
`av1`	mp4, webm	Modern browsers	~40% smaller	Slow*

*AV1 encoding is slow sequentially. Ittybit splits the video into chunks and encodes them in parallel — on managed cloud, this is up to 200x faster than sequential.

With fallback

Encode both h264 (universal) and AV1 (smaller). Serve AV1 to browsers that support it:

ittybit video \
  -i talk.mov \
  -o talk-h264.mp4 \
  --codec h264 \
  --quality high

ittybit video \
  -i talk.mov \
  -o talk-av1.mp4 \
  --codec av1 \
  --quality high