Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra attempts to close that gap by introducing two tools — the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec and a Cinematic Look-Up Table (Cine LUT) — that bring studio-grade capabilities to a device that fits in a pocket.
The most technically significant of the two additions is APV, a video codec developed independently by Samsung Electronics and standardised by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Many smartphone users who shoot in Log end up with flat, unprocessed footage they lack the tools to properly finish.
Bomi Kim of Samsung Research's Reality Media Lab said: "While Galaxy devices supported Log video for high-quality capture, colour grading remained challenging for users.
These are practical applications, though how well the tools hold up will depend on broader industry adoption of the open-source standard.
For long, the gap between professional filmmaking and consumer video has been defined by equipment, be it the codecs, colour-grading suites, and processing power that only studios and well-funded productions could afford. Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra attempts to close that gap by introducing two tools — the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec and a Cinematic Look-Up Table (Cine LUT) — that bring studio-grade capabilities to a device that fits in a pocket.
The most technically significant of the two additions is APV, a video codec developed independently by Samsung Electronics and standardised by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Unlike conventional codecs, which sacrifice image data at the compression stage to manage file sizes, APV is engineered to preserve quality across multiple rounds of editing.
(Left to right) Taesik Eom, CEO of U5K Imageworks, with Bomi Kim of the Reality Media Lab and Sugon Baek of the Camera Image Quality R&D Group at MX Business
The codec supports YUV 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, which retains more colour information than standard formats and gives editors greater flexibility in post-production. Samsung says it reduces file sizes by over 10 per cent compared to existing codecs while delivering what it describes as visually lossless quality.
The trade-off is storage demand. UHD footage recorded at 30fps with APV can consume up to 6GB per minute, which poses real challenges for mobile devices. Samsung addressed this partly through collaboration with its own memory business division, and through thermal management work described by Junseang Min of the MX business: "To enable real-time processing of UHD and 8K video within the constraints of mobile devices, efforts were focused on thermal management and system-level optimisation."
The codec has been released as open source. Sunmi Yoo from Samsung's mobile experience business explained the reasoning: "We chose to develop APV as open source to encourage wider adoption and to build an ecosystem through standardisation."
Users can preview Cine LUTs when shooting in Log and easily apply them to recorded footage using editing tools
The Cine LUT feature addresses a different bottleneck: the complexity of colour grading. Log video — footage captured with a flat colour profile to maximise dynamic range — has long been a staple of professional production, but grading it requires either specialist software or significant technical knowledge. Many smartphone users who shoot in Log end up with flat, unprocessed footage they lack the tools to properly finish.
Samsung's solution is a set of four preset LUTs, developed in collaboration with U5K Imageworks, a professional colourist studio. The styles — Thriller, Blockbuster, Coming-of-age and Romance — can be previewed in real time while shooting and applied directly within the Gallery app, without requiring any third-party editing software.
Bomi Kim of Samsung Research's Reality Media Lab said: "While Galaxy devices supported Log video for high-quality capture, colour grading remained challenging for users. We aimed to make professional-looking results accessible without advanced editing skills."
The LUTs were designed and tested across varied lighting conditions, with engineers validating results using colour charts and vector scopes. Each style is calibrated across neutral, soft and strong intensities, offering some flexibility within each aesthetic.
The pitch extends beyond individual creators. Samsung points to use cases including small businesses producing promotional content without external editors, journalists grading broadcast-ready footage in the field, and musicians self-producing music videos. These are practical applications, though how well the tools hold up will depend on broader industry adoption of the open-source standard.
Whether APV gains traction beyond Samsung's own ecosystem, and whether Cine LUT proves genuinely useful to working professionals or remains a premium filter by another name, will become apparent as the S26 Ultra reaches more users.
