Samsung Electronics is aiming to narrow the gap between professional filmmaking and smartphone videography with the introduction of two advanced video tools in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra — the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec and Cinematic Look-Up Table (Cine LUT) technology.
The company says the new features are designed to bring studio-level video production capabilities to mobile creators, filmmakers, journalists, and small businesses using only a smartphone.
The most technically significant addition is APV, a video codec independently developed by Samsung and standardised by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Unlike traditional codecs that compress footage by discarding image data, APV is engineered to preserve image quality even after multiple rounds of editing and rendering.
The codec supports YUV 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, allowing more colour information to be retained compared to standard smartphone video formats. This provides editors with greater flexibility during colour correction and post-production work.
Samsung claims APV delivers visually lossless quality while reducing file sizes by more than 10 per cent compared to conventional codecs.
However, the improved quality comes with heavy storage demands. According to the company, UHD footage recorded at 30 frames per second using APV can consume up to 6GB of storage per minute.
To address performance challenges, Samsung collaborated with its memory business division and focused on thermal management improvements to enable real-time processing of UHD and 8K video on a mobile device.
Junseang Min from Samsung’s MX Business said the company concentrated on “thermal management and system-level optimisation” to support high-resolution processing within smartphone limitations.
Samsung has also released APV as an open-source codec to encourage wider industry adoption.
Sunmi Yoo from Samsung’s Mobile Experience division said the decision was intended to help “build an ecosystem through standardisation.”
The second major feature, Cine LUT, is designed to simplify professional colour grading for everyday users.
Log video recording, commonly used in professional filmmaking to preserve dynamic range, often requires advanced editing software and technical expertise to produce cinematic results. Many smartphone users struggle to properly grade Log footage after recording.
Samsung’s solution includes four preset LUT styles developed in collaboration with U5K Imageworks.
The presets — Thriller, Blockbuster, Coming-of-age, and Romance — can be previewed in real time during recording and applied directly through the Gallery app without the need for third-party editing software.
According to Bomi Kim from Samsung Research’s Reality Media Lab, the feature was created to make “professional-looking results accessible without advanced editing skills.”
Samsung said the LUTs were tested across different lighting conditions using professional colour calibration tools such as vector scopes and colour charts. Each preset also includes neutral, soft, and strong intensity settings for additional creative control.
Samsung believes the tools could benefit a wide range of users beyond content creators, including journalists producing field reports, musicians creating music videos, and small businesses developing promotional content without external production teams.
Industry observers say the long-term success of APV may depend on whether the codec gains adoption outside Samsung’s ecosystem, while the real-world usefulness of Cine LUT will likely be judged by professional creators once the device reaches broader markets.
With the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung appears to be positioning smartphones not just as content capture devices, but as increasingly capable tools for end-to-end professional video production.
Samsung Electronics Targets Colour-Grading Challenges With New Samsung Galaxy S26 Tools
