The open-source SVT-VP9 project started by Intel as a high performance VP9 video encoder has seen its first new release in five years.

Coming as much surprise today is the release of SVT-VP9 v0.3.1, the first update to this former Intel open-source project since t he v0.3.0 release back in October 2020. The SVT-VP9 encoder was part of Intel's Scalable Video Technology (SVT) initiative under their Open Visual Cloud umbrella. SVT-VP9 was developed alongside the SVT-HEVC encoder for H.265 that they then discontinued the project last year and the most notable SVT-AV1. With SVT-AV1 it ultimately got punted off to the Alliance for Open Media organization and continues seeing new open-source contributions from different companies and is continuing along healthy. Since Intel stopped maintaining SVT-VP9 there hasn't been much to report especially with having laid off many of the developers involved.