Many people are telling me that I should not use lossless animated AVIF, even though it provided smaller file sizes than most lossless animated image formats. But why?

I'm encoding 16 bpc PNG sequences into various lossy video formats for archival purposes because the file sizes are so big. I'm only considering codecs which support 444 and at least 10 bit color. Right now the best I've found seem to be HEVC and AV1. In ffmpeg, they both support the yuv444p12le pixel format, which is great. However, I need help tuning the encode parameters to try and balance the the following as best as possible:

• Maximize the minimum quality of any given frame of the animation
• Keep the filesize relatively low.

Right now with AV1 I'm finding that the PSNR per frame tends to be a lot "spikier" than HEVC; and I don't know why. I attached an image as an example, where the blue line is the PSNR over each frame when encoding with AV1 while the pink is with HEVC.

https://preview.redd.it/gjc5eophcmzd1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d7ff100b8fde1f808daf3b4699be5493954277e6

The SSIM is similar, but not as bad:

https://preview.redd.it/wrej8fyjcmzd1.png?width=1279&format=png&auto=webp&s=363f5706eb43990d286160f50ac08e05b021d367

The exact commands used to encode each are included below:

AV1:

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -i "input%04d.png" -y -pix_fmt yuv444p12le -c:v libaom-av1 -crf 15 -b:v 500M -cpu-used 1 -row-mt 1 -tiles 2x2 output.mkv

HEVC:

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -i "input%04d.png" -y -c:v libx265 -preset veryslow -crf 9 -pix_fmt yuv444p12le "output.mp4"

I don't like how there are big dips in the AV1 PSNR occurring repeatedly (the spikes downward in the blue line on the PSNR plot), since it means there are big differences from one frame to the next, even if the overall average PSNR level is pretty high. I'd prefer to make it smoother if possible.

It doesn't seem to be an issue with HEVC.

Do you have suggestions for changes I can make to my AV1 encoding command which will prevent those spikes? If so, can you also explain why those changes will help?

Feel free to pull it apart and tell me how useless this is with the likes of Tadarr or Handbrake queues, but I like scripting, and I like Bash. Most of all I like STV-AV1, so here is my AV1 conversion script for batch processing lots of dirs at a time.

I'm a bit of a hoarder of old shows and movies, which is what kicked this off. With all the Remux and high-end releases hitting Usenet, I've had a field day pulling them down, but it's eating my space. What better way to preserve space than to use AV1!?

As each challenge has come up, I've made changes to the script. I've had some help with the more complex bits by chatting with Claude, but most of the work is my own. You can see how I have haphazard placed functions, I really need to order those, but it shows that it's just developed on the fly as I've needed it. At the moment, it will try and change language and subs to English as default. It always uses AV1, Matroska and Opus.

I could use some guidance from the community on a couple of the bits, but I do not want to start arguments. Things like film-grain REALLY slow down an encode and are CPU intensive. Nearly all the newer movies I have re-encoded have looked good enough for my own use, and then I started on converting Star Trek The Next Generation from DVD to AV1 and found that I really should add some grain, else it looked too clean and then that caused an unfocused look. That made me look into ways of using FFMpeg to work out whether I should add grain or not. This area is so subjective it's crazy. I've added a function to basically score a small section with PSNR and to gauge how noisy it is whether to enable or disable grain based on source. So far I think it's okay, and TNG is looking better for this function. I mixed in a couple of shows and movies and it's enabled and disabled grain as I believe it is required.

Anyway, please have a look and give me some feedback and advice. If I get trolled to shit, I'll pull this down and go back into my cave!

Thanks.

How do I make lossless animated HEIF/HEIC files out of PNG/JPG image sequences using libheif and/or ImageMagick?

I'm trying to use Av1an (https://github.com/master-of-zen/Av1an) but I'm confused how to set it up on Windows. I downloaded the av1an.exe from commit fc0a19a but no matter what I run it with, I get no output:

PS C:\Users\John\Downloads\av1an> .\av1an.exe
PS C:\Users\John\Downloads\av1an> .\av1an.exe -h
PS C:\Users\John\Downloads\av1an> .\av1an.exe -i hevc_crf9.mp4 -o out.mkv
PS C:\Users\John\Downloads\av1an> .\av1an.exe --help

The av1an.exe file is in its own folder alone; there are no other files or subfolders along with it.

I have ffmpeg installed and it is on the system path. In the readme, I see it says "Note that Av1an requires the executable encoder." but I don't know what that means (where do I get it, how do I set it up so that av1an knows how to find it, etc.).

Any tips?

I have a bunch of videos. I want to share them with others, but I can't upload the videos publicly and can only do so if they were images. So I did some tests and decided that lossless animated AVIF had the smallest output when the input were videos.

Test 1:

APNG: 470MB

Lossless animated WEBP: 131MB

Lossless animatedJXL (effort 9): 194MB

Lossless animated AVIF (-cpu-used 4): 71.5MB

Test 2:

APNG: 438MB

Lossless animated WEBP: 143MB

Lossless animated JXL (effort 9): 175MB

Lossless animated AVIF (-cpu-used 4): 124MB

Test 3:

APNG: 373MB

Lossless animated WEBP: 158MB

Lossless animated JXL (effort 9): 127MB

Lossless animated AVIF (-cpu-used 4): 95.4MB

Hopefully this will explain all my previous posts about using lossless animated AVIF.

I heard that APNGS, lossless animated WEBPs and JXLs can have smaller file sizes than lossless animated AVIFs. Is this true, and if so, how? Can you show me some examples?

Hey there,

I'm having problems regarding hardware decoding, all the videos seem choppy but there are no frame drops. I attached a video for reference encoded using ffmpeg SVT-AV1 from prores 4:4:4. I tried multiple parameters but nothing changed, except that I noticed when crf goes up there the problem is less visible.

Playback is on machines using RTX 4090/Quadro A6000/Quadro A6000 Ada and on all of the it's the same. The program I'm using is either VLC, MPC or ffplay.

I wonder if this is encoding problem if so, are there any parameters I should change to avoid this issue.

Video:

https://reddit.com/link/1gjexjm/video/o70zcrikewyd1/player

https://preview.redd.it/n44v4a0lewyd1.png?width=661&format=png&auto=webp&s=304d8c27ee6dd7d5645f959a6498bc69fe744e8d

This is the command used:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 15 svtav1_test.mp4

I Appreciate any help.

What are some tools or image viewers for Windows that can support playing lossless animated AVIF files? What are some Android apps that support playing them on mobile devices?

I have an app which screenshots websites and saves them as .png, then I use ffmpeg to re-encode it into AV1 using libaom-av1 so they maintain more or less the same quality (for my purposes at least) while taking up only 10-20% as much storage.

However there's some images which are up to 100k pixels in height, and the max I seem to be able to process is around 50-60k pixel height. All images have a width of 1920px.

I've been looking for a solution to this but can't seem to find one, any ideas?

When I went from H.265 to AV1, I knew encodes would take a lot longer as I go through Box Sets of DVDs each time, plus about 34 blu-rays and 4 4ks. A total of about 4000 files if you include subtitle files for each .mkv video file. So, this inexpensive AV1 Rig has been a great joy and a great hobby.

Rig: 3 AMD 8 Cores/16 Logical, 1 Intel 6C/12L Windows 11 Pro on .5 TB nvme, 32GB, 2.5 ghz managed 6 port Switch each. 3 Beelink Minis 1 old HP G4. 13 optical, 12 usb, 1 on PCI. 4 are 4k optical r/W. All on top of one Cabinet 8"x3"

Video Server: Intel Nuc; 4C/8L, Windows 11 pro 32GB on Thunderbolt .5T nvme dongle. 2.5 ghz on usb dongle. 1 4T nvme for Video/Subtitle files. 1 2 T for backup. I can still grow 1,25 TB. EMBY Server PRIVATE and Streaming Internet Private.'

1000-watt UPS. Handbreke 1.82, MakeMkv 1.7

Devices: 2 Samsung Crystal TVs 65" QLED 55" Non-QLED HDR both via WiFi, WIndows 11 and IOS devices on secured private internet streaming.

Cost Estimate: $5000 for all in today's US dollars (Used)..

Sharpening:

Phase I: Always use Makemkv, not Handbrake, to the Optical Drives.

Phase 2: Handbrake Filter, Unsharp. Ultralite, Ultrafile (default)

Phase 3: Samsung Cystal TVs, Adds interlacing, Sharping and Color improvements (QLED for HDR). Removes many sharpening artifacts.

RESULTS; CRYSTAL CLEAR COLORFUL SMOOTH VIDEO BETTER THAN THEATER QUALITY.

FAQ:

1. Have you sharpened 4k movies? YES.

One was 88GB on nvme after Makemkv and through Shares to another 8/16 AMD. It has a long Prelude and Intermission. So, on Part 1, I stripped the Prelude (but kept the Credits), and on Part 2 stripped the Intermission. Subtitles not included as I got them through Opensubtitle.com. Encode time 3 hours (concurrent). 3.5 GB Part 1, 2.5 GB Part 2 (total 6GB out of 88GB). AV1 10 Bit Dolby vision QLED HDR Rocks! Smooth as Silk! Dolby Sound!!

FPS average: 13 FPS no sharpening. 10 FPS with Unsharp, Ultralite, Ultrafine.

2. How did you get into Sharpening and learn all this stuff?

BBC 1960 DVDs. Very Unsharp shall we say. Noticed much Better when from Makemkv. Experimented with Lapsharp (better with animation) many artifacts. Unsharp Ultralite Ultrafine had almost zero artifacts that were being cleaned up on my Crystal TVs!!.

3. Why all the Optical Drives and how did you get your 4K Opticals (4 of them).

When I do big box sets (1 had 208 disks!). I like loading them 3 or 4 at the same on each of the 4 Encoder Systems. So, all 13 will be flashing at the same time!! I name each of the .mkv files to be exactly what I want on the Video Server. I do maybe 3 seasons at a time. Even with the 13 optical, it still was a MASH of 3 days to do it.

4k opticals were HD blu-ray only: $100 each. See Marty's Ultimate Flashing Guide.

4k AV1 is fine on my 2.6 Ghz Wifi and streaming via the Gateway 1Gbit/sec..

4. Why the UPS, and what's not on UPS battery?

The monitor and GATEWAY/WiFi is not on UPS battery (oh and I use a KVM 4 port HDMI/USB). With the Gateway/Wifi battery power backup is only 5 minutes.

Everything else is on UPS Battery. I can still be encoding/Loading for 30 minutes without power. If I change it to a 24V boat battery, maybe for 4 hours?

If I catch the 30 minute power outage, I can Pause Handbreak Apps and maybe make it till 45 minutes?

Hate to loose track of what I'm doing on the big box sets.

5. Why are you using Windows 11 pro and not Linux?

I was on Linux Fedora 40 six months ago, including the Video Server. I noticed that the 4 Encoders were hammering the Video Server and slowing it to a crawl or worse they and the video server started crawling or Encodes failing.

Before this I was on windows 11 pro and did not see these things and had so much work to debug linux. But I had noticed windows 11 pro do a lot of caching.

I tried Debian.

Back on Pro, One disk was mislabeled and with a DVD Name of "DVD Video" data wise. Ugh. Loaded the right one with Makemkv and renamed the 4 episodes while as they came in on let's say:

Source 1 Shared Directory 4 22-minute 1GB video files

Encoder 1: Batch Folder use via Share on Source 1 immediately when last of 4 episodes renamed on Source 1.

Video 1: Share where files, to use, live.

Task Manager Performance Graphs on all 3 systems.

Notes: Source 1. Network Blip, No disk activity from episodes!

Encode 1. No Disk Activity except OS. Memory manager Cache Going UP!

Network Blip to video 1 then nothing except Acks till episode completion. Big Spike at completion.

Video 1: Network Spike and 0 kb file on episode then NOTHING. Couldn't see disk spike from the 0 kb file creation. 2 second Network Spike at end of video episodes 133 MBytes each going from 0 kb to 133MB at last two seconds.

NO DISK Source and Encoder for 4 episodes??

Then on 2 second disk on NVMe at episode ends?

My NVMe's like this a lot!!

5. Why the thunder bolt USB NVME C: And Why the 2.5 Ghz USB dongle?

Windows 11 pro (windows to go RUFUS)?

So the 2 NVMe M.2 in this NUC 6 are free and clear. Video and Backup (1 hour) 893 GB!!

Old NUC 6 only had 1Ghz LAN port.

Any Questions?

https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/releases/v2.3.0

• NEW FAST DECODE MODE
• New fast-decode (2) to allow for an average AV1 software cycle reduction of 25-50% vs fast-decode 0 with a 1-3% BD-Rate loss across the presets
• Improved fast-decode (1) option to increase its AV1 software cycle reduction by ~10% while maintaining the same quality levels
• Improved --lp settings for high resolutions, with CRF gaining a ~4% improvement in speed and VBR gaining ~15%
• Further Arm-based optimizations improving the efficiency of previously written Arm-neon implementations by an average of 30%
• Address speed regressions for high resolutions first pass encode by tuning the threading parameters, with 1080p showing the biggest gains
• Enabled AVX512 by default in cmake allowing for ~2-4% speedup
• ...

Windows FFMPEG: https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/jobs/8220280503/artifacts/raw/ffmpeg.exe

Linux FFMPEG 7.0.2 static: https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/jobs/8220280507/artifacts/raw/ffmpeg

I convert a video into a lossless animated AVIF file, but now I can't play it on Windows Photos or XnView MP. Irfanview only plays it as a still image, and when I put it on a web browser it didn't play all the frames. How do I fix that?

Here is the command I used:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf format=yuv444p10le -c:v libaom-av1 -crf 0 -cpu-used 4 out.avif

Can ffmpeg make lossless animated AVIF files? If so, how?

And i am really surprised and happy!

I re-encoded a whole anime to save storage and i went from 28GB down to just about 7GB, with a average filesize of about 300MB per video! this is insane! :D
It took about 12 hours (if i am not wrong) on my Ryzen 7 5800x.
Thanks for making this biest of an encoder!

Settings used in Handbrake (if anyone is interested)

1080p | 23.976fps | preset 4 | 24 RF

average video size AV1

I hope this is the right place to post this. There doesn't seem to be a specific subreddit for this tool. So...

I want to use this tool to make sure I'm not wasting bitrate on my encodes. So, I used a file that I had already reencoded and I ran it to get a prediction and then ran it on a reencode and got these results.

Prediction
ab-av1.exe crf-search --encoder libx265 --min-vmaf 93 -i "original.mkv" --preset slow
crf 27.7 VMAF 93.08 predicted video stream size 215.82 MiB (18%) taking 2 hours

Comparison
ab-av1.exe vmaf --reference "original.mkv" --distorted "distorted.mkv"
93.97596

The "distorted" file was encoded at using x265 with a CRF22.

Is this telling me that I could have dropped my encode down to 27.7? That seems crazy low.

I'm going to try encoding the source again at 27 and then do another comparison. But I'm wondering if anyone has any insight to my results so far.

I'm a student really interested in computer networking and I think video streaming over the internet is one of the coolest applications of computer networking that currently exist so I joined this sub to learn more about these codecs. I hope to do a PhD in computer networking and become a researcher that does some work with internet streams.

For the other people in this sub, what background do you guys come from? Are you guys content creators, researchers, producers?

Thanks.

So I tried encoding a movie with the latest svt-av1-psy, using the following options:

--crf 25 --preset 4 --film-grain 36 --film-grain-denoise 0 --keyint 10s --tune 3 --adaptive-film-grain 1

Compression and quality both were superb, near indistinguishable from source, but the file itself turned out to be corrupted - some scenes, usually for a few seconds, appeared completely grey or just glitched out, or skipped entirely depending on player. The original file is not corrupted and plays fine everywhere. Could it be an issue with settings, or something else?

UPDATE: What i did in the end

-- Note: Let me start by saying that some of you misinterpreted my quest for low idle with low power in general. Those would overlap if i had a big library or the processor would be used a lot most of the time, but that's not the case, i'm willing to consume more power during the effective encoding while the rest of the time consuming less since this will be a 24/7 server and i don't consume a lot of video content. I know this isn't common in this kind of subreddit but we exist. I'm watching less and less, but i still want to have a library for those times when i i do. --

After all your advices i reflected well on all my possibilieties. Going with 5950x would have been the cheapest upgrade having already everything and just needing to swap the cpu, but at the same time the performance upgrade itself wouldn't be worth the headache honestly. I would have to spend more than 200€ for a meager upgrade, i didn't find it worthy.
Going the Arc route would have been a great route to take if i didn't need software encoding.
Going AMD in general would have been great if i had a medium to big collection and was a big downloader and hoarder of ISOs. If you that are reading this are, then going amd it's probably the answer because of the low power while encoding. There is almost 40% less power difference in current amd 9000 vs Intel Ultra s2 while pushed to 100% on all cores ( much less/almost none vs some 7000 - look into it ) moreover 9000 has true avx-512 that optimize av1 sftw encoding even more ( not by much as of writing but free performance...is free ).
Even then i still went with Intel. That's because :
As i've said below and above most of the time my server will be "idling" or not encoding anyway and i'm sure that intel idles better and has less problems with c/p-states on linux/unraid.
I don't have a big library nor am i a big hoarder of series and such. At least not yet. Moreover i trust QSV encoder more, since the quality of all the formats it's better ( be 264,265 or AV1 ) and wanting low idle i can simply use the iGPU instead of a dGPU ( that i can sell and make money too ).
Speaking of AV1 encoder, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245k has it integrated so it includes the cost of an AV1 gpu as the a380, while giving me all the rest too. I know i've said i want software encoding but having the hardware if needed, these last 2 weeks between used sites forums and reddit made me realize, it's a must too. The more i looked into it the more i came to understand that "future-proofing" for me means that i want to be covered for everything: when we are talking about hardware swapping it takes a lot of time; sell the old, research and look for the new, wait to send and receive, do the upgrade, modify things in software to be sure everything works... Thinking about it, i realized the time spent and the headaches avoided have a lot of more value since this will be an all purpose server which i will rely on for more than just streaming ( no one has ever died for going back to streaming sites for a weekend or a week but it becomes a problem if i can't access some files or something get corrupted ). It's incredible how much you come to value stability when you start to rely on something more and more.
As for KVM/IPMI ( instead of vpro q670 motherboard ) i already have a piKVM who works great but i'd bought a JetKVM which consume less power, i prefer the interface and i wanted to support the project ( and was only 69$ ).

Finally I didn't buy the cpu yet because it's in pre-order here and i believe will come down in price since most pc users are gamers and it doesn't perform exceptionally there, so it will be a flop and i'll pay less thanks to it.

So this is my reasoning, as you can see mine are particular conditions that won't overlap with most.
I'd say that:
If you need only hardware encoding you can easily go with an arc310/380 with whatever you have.
If you need software encoding with big collections i'd wait for 9000 series to go down a bit in price ( since those have flopped too ) and buy a 9700 or bigger depending on usecases. ( the more cores the better )
If you don't know if you'll need av1, and in case going with good quality and small but not smallest files it's good enough and your building now but you are on a budget then i'd easily go with a 7th gen or above intel cpu ( decent HEVC encoder and decoder and low power usage). If power/ idle power concerns you i'd go with a 7th gen i3. Then in the future you could buy an arc card and solve all of your problems.

So thank you all, when i'm gonna buy and test the cpu ( maybe christmas? maybe after ) i'm probably gonna update again.
------------------

Original Post:
Hi Everybody,

I'm in an upgrade-mood and one of my future-proofing essentials is av1 software transcoding ( encoding with software and decoding via hardware).
Now i've already got a server with a 3900x but it idles at 60w with only 2ssd sata in it. If i add a nvidia card it goes more near 70, and with 4hdds around 100w.
My objective is being able to av1 enc/dec decently while keeping my idle power as low as possible.
I'm looking into 12th gen because of QSV, which would let me drop the nvidia card, and for what i believe is the best price to performance ratio being more than 2 years old.

So i've been looking around and seems to me that the 12600k it's the "sweet spot" for what i've looking for, but it has been hard to find decent data on the performance on AV1 transcoding. Data is starting to emerge all around with the recent spreading of AV1 but it's not enough yet so i'm asking you.
Still i've found a 12500h embedded in a erying chinese motherboard of which i read good things about so i've added it in case you know something about it too.

As i've sad i've got a 3900x (undervolt -0.75, stock cooler) but i didn't yet setup ( nor learned ) av1 transcoding so i'd need data about this cpu and how it would compare with the cpus above too, if you have and idea.

My assumption are that with 12600k i would have same or slighty worse performance than my actual cpu but half the idle power and with the 12500h worse-er than the 12600k but don't know about how much.
*Note* : i'm probably going to add a hba lsi 9200, so no deep cstates even with these intel cpus.

P.s: I Assume it would be worse/same in idle consumption but what about the 5900x? Does any of you have any data about it?

Thanks you in advance guys!

edits: refinements

How do I encode / decode a grayscale image in AV1 when only RGB, RGBA variants are listed in the avif.h API?

How do I make lossless animated AVIF files?

gotta admit no idea what anything else is except AV1 is good quality, low bitrate, with that being said I have 6900XT which are capable of decoding but not encoding, super sick and tired of HEVC lagging while editing and hates AVC for its bad quality

Im considering selling this GPU and buy a used 7800XT for AV1 encoding to record and edit with, but since 6900 XT supports the decoding part, should i buy Low Profile Arc A380 or A310 to purely use it for encoding?

Encoding a 1 hour long 1080p 60fps x264 video with handbrake set to slow.

Roughly how long would this take? Thanks.

Hi All,

I've been trying to get setup to stream iRacing to YouTube. I've taken advice from some people on here regarding settings however my streams seem to look really bad. (They look bad even when I try h264 to Twitch too).

I've compared my settings to Nvidia card users and run the AMD equivalents, however they seem to get much better quality than I do at the same bit rates.

Recording is fine, however recording locally I record in higher quality.

I game in 4K resolution in HDR but have OBS setup for 1080p/non-hdr for streaming. I'm using the latest drivers 24.10.1 but this has been present on all the drivers i've used since I've had the card (around 9 months).

My settings in OBS are as follows:
Output:
Audio: FFMPEG AAC (audio tab is set to 128kbps per audio stream)
Encoder: AMD HW AV1
Rescale Output: Disabled
Rate Control: CBR
Bitrate: 6500Kbps (I know this is low but from other streams I've seen this should be enough for 1080p)
Keyframe: 2s
Preset: High Quality (looks worse with quality)
Profile: Main
Encoder Options: -deblock 1 -deblockalpha 6 -deblockbeta 6 -lookahead 32 -enforce_hrd true -pa_static_scene_detection_enable true -pa_static_scene_detection_sensitivity low -pa_scene_change_detection_enable true -pa_scene_change_detection_sensitivity high -pa_high_motion_quality_boost_mode auto (these were based off a recommendation on here)

Video:
Base Canvas: 1080p
Ouput Res: 1080p
No Downscaling
FPS: 60

Example Stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/Q5VR6R1DLe4
OBS Log: https://obsproject.com/logs/bPEZRUZqd8f56i5I (analyser shows no issues)

Could anyone advise of anything I could do to improve, whether I have any settings wrong, or is this just a simple fact that the bitrate is too low? (from what I've seen for normal gameplay, even using 6kbps for AV1 1440p should be fine)

Thanks!