VP9 encoding with latest ffmpeg

[racer-x]

The very latest version of ffmpeg by Zeranoe uses libvpx v1.4 and is much faster than previous versions. Here are a couple of batch scripts which work pretty well I think...

1-pass quality/bitrate script:

SET PATH="C:\FFMpeg\64-bit"
for %%a in ("*.avi") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuv420p -qmin 0 -qmax 50 -crf 5 -b:v 5M -threads 8 -c:a libvorbis -b:a 128k -f webm "%%~na.mkv"  

pause

Automated 2-pass script that uses settings recommended by Google:

SET PATH="C:\FFMpeg\64-bit"
for %%a in ("*.avi") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuv420p -pass 1 -b:v 1000k -threads 8 -speed 4 -tile-columns 6 -frame-parallel 1 -auto-alt-ref 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -an -f NULL null

for %%a in ("*.avi") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuv420p -pass 2 -b:v 1000k -threads 8 -speed 1 -tile-columns 6 -frame-parallel 1 -auto-alt-ref 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -f webm "%%~na.mkv"  

pause

Obviously you'll need to edit path to ffmpeg or any setting changes you want to make.

[sophisticles]

How much faster is this version?

[racer-x]

About 3x faster on my i7, though it still only uses about 30% resources, so there is still much more room for speed improvements.

[newpball]

One thing I noticed is that while it is definitely multi-threaded it does not seem to be able to utilize hyperthreading very well.