Netflix encoding test, x264, x265, svt-av1

[sophisticles]

Continuing with the encoding tests I have been doing, this thread will feature a different source, El Fuente, created from clips available here:

https://media.xiph.org/video/derf/

Netflix has created a number of videos for testing encoders, and on the above linked page you can find 4k clips in y4m format.

What I did was take all the files that list Netflix El Fuente as the source, loaded them into Shotcut and exported them as a single ProRes HQ mov file.

Doing a psnr[Y], psnr[Cb], psnr[Cr], ssim[Y], ssim[Cb], ssim[Cr], analysis of the ProRes compared to the y4m ingested files shows that the file I created to use as source was for all practical purposes lossless, scoring over 56db in PSNR and 0.998 in SSIM.

My testing has convinced me that the best encoder currently available to the general public, legally free, is svt-av1.

I will do some svt-hevc test encodes with this source and post those here as well.

[Selur]

My testing has convinced me that the best encoder currently available to the general public, legally free, is svt-av1.

okay.
Have you tried rav1e, aomenc, Intel and NVIDIA AV1 Hardware encoders?

[sophisticles]

Have you tried rav1e, aomenc, Intel and NVIDIA AV1 Hardware encoders?

Nvidia's av1 nvenc - According to Nvidia all it's capable of is 40% better efficiency than nvenc h264:

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/av1-encoding-and-fruc-video-performance-boosts-and-h...-architecture/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-NVENC-AV1-FFmpeg

Hardly anything to write home about.

The Intel av1 encoder is the thing that started me on these encoding tests. According to tests i have seen, inlet's av1 hardware encoder matches x264+veryslow in terms of quality and as i mentioned, I was trying to simulate what I could expect quality wise if i bought a cheap Intel Arc video card:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-arc-av1-encoder-dominates-nvenc

rav1e - Tried it, way too slow to be practical.

aomenc - Maybe I'm mistaken, but i thought this project was folded into the svt-av1 project:

https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1

[Selur]

aomenc - Maybe I'm mistaken, but i thought this project was folded into the svt-av1 project

aomenc should still be alive and used for further developments aiming for av-2. (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=181767)
Also SVT-AV1 still seems more streaming oriented to me.

rav1e - Tried it, way too slow to be practical.

Have you tried using chunked encoding when using av1? (for example through: https://github.com/master-of-zen/Av1an; latest version of chunked encoding in Hybrid is broken and only fixed in my dev versions atm.)

The Intel av1 encoder is the thing that started me on these encoding tests. According to tests i have seen, inlet's av1 hardware encoder matches x264+veryslow in terms of quality and as i mentioned, I was trying to simulate what I could expect quality wise if i bought a cheap Intel Arc video card

Yup, the issue with Intel usually is, that their first generation encoder always beats NVIDIAs, but in later generations NVIDIA catches up and improves. (so I suspected that this early Intel has a heads up)

Cu Selur

[poisondeathray]

I didn't watch the full video, but that youtube review by EposVox looks like only a gameplay source was tested

For "GPU" AV1 , NVEnc AV1 looks a bit ahead of Intel AV1 for 10bit quality in Rigaya's recent tests ( 2022.12) for scenery live action, but behind on anime. NVEnc AV1 is also slower on his setup. VCE AV1 behind in everything including speed
https://rigaya.github.io/vq_results/