DoveRunner Helps Streaming Services Cut Premium Video Costs with Secure AV1 Delivery

AV1 support in DoveRunner Transcoding & Packaging includes forensic watermarking, helping trace leaked premium content back to its source.

SAN JOSE, CA, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Streaming services can now deliver their highest-quality video at roughly half the data, lowering what they spend to store and stream premium content. DoveRunner, a global mobile application and content security company, today announced support for AV1, the royalty-free video format used by YouTube and Netflix, in DoveRunner Transcoding & Packaging, its service that prepares video for streaming. Every AV1 stream can now be protected with DRM, which controls who can play content, and forensic watermarking, which embeds an invisible identifier that traces a leaked copy back to its source.

AV1 can make a 4K video roughly half the size of the same video in H.264, the format most streaming services still rely on, with no loss in picture quality. Smaller files mean lower storage costs, and lower delivery costs every time a title is streamed. AV1 is also royalty-free, while older formats are licensed for a fee. Adoption is accelerating. In one industry report, 35% of video developers said they plan to implement AV1 in the next 12 months, more than any other format, and Netflix has reported that AV1 now accounts for 30% of its streaming.

Most services will use AV1 for their 4K and other premium tiers, on newer devices that support it, and keep existing formats for everything else. DoveRunner's Forensic Watermarking covers every version of a title, whichever format a viewer receives, so the content most valuable to pirates stays traceable.
"AV1 gives streaming services a real way to bring down the cost of delivering premium content, and they shouldn't have to give up protection to get it," said James Ahn, CEO of DoveRunner. "Our customers can now prepare, protect, and deliver AV1 in one place, with the same forensic watermarking they rely on for every other format."

Transcoding & Packaging encodes AV1 alongside H.264 and H.265 and packages it in CMAF, so one set of files serves both HLS and DASH streaming instead of two separate copies. Forensic watermarking is applied on the server, adds no latency, and does not affect streaming speed, and its quality has been verified through independent testing by Cartesian. For customers that use their own transcoding service, AV1 is also supported in DoveRunner's forensic watermarking SDK and plug-in.

"Our customers asked for AV1 because they want the bandwidth and storage savings for their premium tiers," said Harish Bhat, Senior Principal Product manager, Forensic Watermarking and Anti-Piracy at DoveRunner. "We built AV1 into Transcoding & Packaging with DRM and forensic watermarking, so teams can add AV1 to their ladder without changing how they protect their content."

Availability and Pricing
AV1 support is now available in DoveRunner Transcoding & Packaging. Like other formats in Transcoding & Packaging, AV1 is billed per minute of output, at a rate that reflects the additional processing AV1 encoding requires. AV1 usage appears as its own line item, so customers can see exactly what they spend on it. Organizations can request a demo by contacting the DoveRunner sales team.

About DoveRunner
DoveRunner is an industry-leading security technology company founded in 2000 in Seoul, South Korea, with offices in India, Indonesia, and the United States. For over two decades, DoveRunner has been a pioneer in digital rights management, delivering patent-based software solutions and services to content service providers, global handset makers, telecoms, and content stores worldwide.

DoveRunner offers two flagship SaaS product lines: Content Security and Mobile App Security, both designed to be robust, innovative, and fast to deploy, serving customers from independent studios to enterprise-class organizations. DoveRunner is ISO certified to 27001, 27017, and 27018 standards. To learn more, visit https://doverunner.com

Seanna Tucker
DoveRunner
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