AOM encoder for AV1?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
Post Reply
MiniSiets
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:03 pm

AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by MiniSiets »

So I was testing out the new AV1 encoder included in Handbrake 1.6, and initially I was quite impressed by it, as I was able to encode a video at 13 RF that at first glance appeared to be higher quality than my previous 16 RF encode in H265 while still saving filesize on top of it. However upon closer inspection I discovered that in certain areas of my anime encodes that are prone to blocking, it is significantly worse than H265 in quality, to a distracting degree. So while perhaps in an overall sense AV1 seems higher quality than H265, I still prefer H265 for more consistency in quality during those specific scenes when blocking becomes a distraction.

Reading up on this issue, I heard that this could be related to poor quality of anime encodes with the SVT encoder, and that it is better to use AOM instead. Is it possible this encoder might also eventually be added to Handbrake as an option for AV1?
mduell
Veteran User
Posts: 8187
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:54 pm

Re: AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by mduell »

The RF scales aren't the same, so I'm not sure what you're comparing here; you'e got two encodes with different quality and size.
MiniSiets
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:03 pm

Re: AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by MiniSiets »

I already understand that; I was just using an example to illustrate my point, but even when I increase the RF value further so that filesizes are relatively close the problem still persists. There is clearly a discrepancy in the way SVT handles encoding animation versus H265 in a way that is not as good as H265, despite that AV1 is purportedly supposed to be a superior format.
mduell
Veteran User
Posts: 8187
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:54 pm

Re: AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by mduell »

Both encoders are highly tunable for different content; have you followed or developed best practices for this content type for each encoder?

Regardless, the answer to your question is it's possible AOM or other AV1 encoders will be added to HB in the future. The biggest factor is ongoing developer interest in them, either from the HB team, or externally like Intel for SVT.
MiniSiets
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:03 pm

Re: AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by MiniSiets »

Well, I usually try to tune the basic settings that Handbrake provides in its GUI for best results, but beyond that I don't typically get into the manual text-based parameters because, on top of the fact that I often don't know how these settings may affect video quality, historically H265 already looked great enough with just these baseline settings tweaked for me, so I didn't see the value in refining it any further. For anime encodes in H265, I usually just go with 16 RF at the slow preset, and that's enough to produce impressively similar results to its source while reducing filesize to 15-20% of the original. Buuuuut I'm always open to squeezing even more quality and compression out of it if AV1 is all it's talked up to be; I just haven't seen it yet in practice when I was testing it. I would think even with basic settings it should at least be close or slightly better than HEVC when operating around similar filesizes.

But thanks for answering my question.
mduell
Veteran User
Posts: 8187
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:54 pm

Re: AOM encoder for AV1?

Post by mduell »

Unless the anime is 4K, you'd probably be just as well off with x264 at the same encoding speed as x265.
Post Reply