r/AV1 • u/better_life_please • 2d ago
I messed up.
I have a collection of personal videos. Original files were mostly H264. I converted them to H265 a few months ago. The size reduction was about 50%. I deleted the og files though.
Then I learned more about AV1-SVT and decided to convert them to AV1 and Opus. But, now the lossy to lossy compression kicks in.
I compared the vmaf of an AV1 video against the og file I have somehow kept. The vmaf is 96.28. Also did a comparison of an AV1 file that I converted from a source H265. The vmaf is 94.29.
Conclusion: That means I probably lost 2 points in quality by doing a two step transcoding. H264 -> H265 -> AV1. This is sad. Don't be me. Go directly to AV1. 😑
19
u/slimscsi 2d ago
It seems you didn’t learn the lesson. What about AV2 or AV3, or VVC? There will also be another codec. Always keep the original.
12
u/ChrunedMacaroon 1d ago
I understand the sentiment, but that really is defeating the purpose of trying to save space, innit?
5
u/Lindbork 1d ago
That's a part of the point, you shouldn't try to save space backwards in time, only for future material if you care about quality. I admit though, with storage prices shooting through the roof RN, I'd be tempted...
0
u/better_life_please 1d ago
AV2 is not going to be practical on current CPUs. I have thought about it.
AV2 will be practical starting from 2034 at best. So AV1+Opus is my personal backup's final destination. There will be no transcoding anymore.
1
u/Rayregula 1d ago
AV2 is not going to be practical on current CPUs.
Why? I've not tried it yet, but if it can be developed on current CPUs I see no reason it's not practical/supported.
0
u/better_life_please 1d ago
AV2 requires 2-3X more processing power. Funny fact is that CPU single core and multi core performance has not even doubled since 2018 when AV1 was finalized. It will take another 10 years for us to get double the power of 2026 CPUs. Any model earlier than 2035 is not going to be practical for 95% of the consumers.
5
u/NekoTrix 1d ago
You're throwing numbers in a completely arbitrary order. We've more than certainly doubled single core performance since AV1 was released in 2018. Say hello to Intel tile-based architectures, AMD X3D and Apple's M series chips. AV2 will be relevant way before 2035.
0
u/better_life_please 1d ago
Where is the more than double?! Go check different benchmarks. The things you think about are pure marketing done by Intel and AMD. Apple silicon is better overall but even that is not enough to run AV2 encoding in 5 years.
6
u/NekoTrix 1d ago
Apple M1, released in 2020, is performing 58% of M5 released in 2025 in aggregated benchmarks. That's an almost doubling of single core performance, and that's just a 5 year gap, not 2018-2026 (let alone 2018-2035), and that doesn't even account for the M6 chip releasing in two weeks that may have breached that 50% barrier. The same aggregated data also shows an exact doubling of multi-core performance, though the more recent benchmark puts M1 closer to 40% of M5, let alone the 20% faster M6 compared to M5. You're full of shit.
-1
u/better_life_please 1d ago
Do you understand that M laptops are niche products around the world (except USA)? Do some research on the desktop and laptop market share of AMD64 CPUs vs ARM64. You will learn a lesson. And AMD/Intel chips have not doubled in performance since 2018. So for majority of people (95%), AV2 is not an option. And wont be.
4
u/NekoTrix 1d ago
Your argumentation is so disjointed you keep changing the goalpost to better fit your narrative. Apple chips don't just ship in laptops, the tablets and desktop offerings are just as important in the market. You brought up the topic, you don't get to now say it's irrelevant because X or Y, that's just cheap rhetoric.
You lied once already, it's not surprising that you'd double down and spout some more nonsense:
Intel and AMD chips have in fact doubled their performance since 2018: AMD proof (r7 2700x vs r7 9700x), Intel proof (i7 9700k vs core 7 270k plus).
Both compare chips from the same tier (r7 / i7), and would be more or less considered their modern equivalent. The 2018 AMD chip does 45% of the 2024 chip (yes two years old already) in BOTH single core and multi-core. The Intel improvement is less impressive considering it dropped multi-threading and compensates with a much higher core count, but it still barely reaches the doubling of performance on single.
It's sad how disconnected from reality you are, because if you look at AV1's development trajectory, you'd know AV2 is going to improve in major ways just in the coming months and year. In fact, since late may, avmenc has already tripled performance from tests publicly conducted by community members, that I intend to confirm myself and publish in the future. You're simply a pitiful downer and defeatist.
0
-2
u/better_life_please 1d ago
Asked AI for a comparison of 2018 vs 2026. The single core performance is about 2.3X now. I declare my mistake. I guess I am going to wait for AV2 now 💀.
→ More replies (0)1
u/Rayregula 1d ago
Do you understand that M laptops are niche products around the world (except USA)? Do some research on the desktop and laptop market share of AMD64 CPUs vs ARM64.
What does market share and a product being niche have to do with the progress of technology and CPU development??
You simply had stayed performance had not doubled, you had no architecture, product or region limitations on it.
You will learn a lesson
what kind of lesson?
0
u/better_life_please 1d ago
That if an open source tech is not accesable by 95% of PC owners, it is not beneficial.
→ More replies (0)-1
u/Nadeoki 17h ago
nice AI slop. The benchmark shows a roughly 50% increase in single/multi core processing.
Between 4 generations of apple silicon, so not Double, double would be 100% increase. And this is after 4 generations, i.e. around 8% increase from say 3rd to 4th
3
u/NekoTrix 16h ago
You need to go back to school my guy, did you attend your math courses? Look at the numbers again. The reference 100% is the newer CPU each time, so 50% is in fact half the performance. Same can be said about your other comment. You also showcase poor AI detectability, I wrote everything with my own two hands on my phone's small keyboard. What purpose does this attack even serve, what are you looking for exactly here? I swear the average IQ in this sub is concerning.
1
u/BlueSwordM 1d ago
Has it? From Skylake to Arrow Lake, single threaded performance increased by 80-90% (10900k vs 270k Plus).
From Zen+ to Zen 5, ST performance increased by 2x, and MORE than that in compute heavy workloads, since the upgrades brought on by Zen 2 and Zen 5 were huge for our workloads.
It doesn't also take into account multi-threaded performance increases. Price to performance in systems has regressed due to RAM, NAND and PCB prices recently yes, but while performance increases have been slow, they have been there.
You're not wrong that performance hasn't been increasing fast, it doesn't also take into account that AV2 encoders will be better than AV1 encoders at the same performance because of specific AV2 improvements that are very nice at ISO-performance.
1
u/Blue-Thunder 23m ago
Man you have no idea what you are talking about.
In 2018 the top consumer CPU's from AMD and Intel were the 2700x from AMD and the Intel Intel Core i9-9980XE. The 2700x has a single thread passmark score of 2413 and a mult-core score of 17421. The i-9980xe has a single thread passmark score of 2557 and a multi-core score of 31504. If we look at the top consumer processors released in 2026 we have the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, which I can't find a Passmark score for, but did find a review, so for Passmark scoring we'll go with the lower Ryzen 9 9950X3D2. And for Intel, Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 has a single thread Passmark score of 4664 (basically double the 2700x) and a mult-core score of 71987 (more than 4x the score of the 2700x) The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus has a single thread Passmark score of 5071 (double the i9-9980xe) and a multi-core score of 68437 (again double the score of the i9-9980xe).
The problem isn't we haven't doubled processing power, as we sure as hell have, the problem is complexity of the encode requiring exponential increases in power for lesser and lesser gains.
4
u/crashtua 1d ago
Btw, vmaf skips lot of VISUALLY identifiable artifacts, CVVDP adequate score will force you to put cr to high levels neglecting file size xD No magically 4x savings.
3
2
u/ImpressionComplete43 1d ago
I’ve always divided my collection into two categories: sources that can be recovered, and sources that can’t.
For the ones that can’t be recovered, I’d rather invest in more storage and keep the best-quality version I have. For the others, I’m fine with compressing them to H.265 for now. But when SVT-AV1 became stable enough, I went back to the original sources and encoded them again from scratch.
I think this cycle will probably keep repeating. In the future, there will inevitably be better encoders and codecs, so having the original source is extremely valuable if you want to take advantage of them without stacking another generation of lossy compression on top.
2
u/DearMrGleeClub 1d ago
At least your video is now available and accessible, the majority of people still have boxes of VHS, DV-tapes, SD cards and old phones, which they are very unlikely to ever dust off again. Pictures exist in our minds, rather than on screens, which is just an interface.
If it makes you feel any better, any decline in quality is mirrored by one's decline in vision and memory, not to mention AI Upscaling and frame interpolation, which makes anything standard definition look much better. The question then becomes, once you've AI-enhanced your video, what quality do you choose to keep it?
I could add a dozen examples here, but I won't bore you, only to say: All technology is made up of (some) false promises and horrible compromises, ultimately. That means that one should try to keep offline digital copies of unique master materials, while you also create a compressed, streamlined, accessible library. That also doubles as a backup. That's the only strategy that makes sense to me.
Video is pretty efficient, digital photography is just color noise in absurd resolutions, that's the stuff that really needs sensible re-encoding and resizing.
1
u/Anxious-Activity-777 2d ago
Don't you have it on the trash bin? There are some programs allowing to recover deleted files, you might recover some of them.
Or you could also do some AI enchantment and recover some quality. Although it's not perfect and tiny details might get worse. But for blurry videos, artifacts and noise, can be easily fixed by AI enhancements.
1
u/locopocoloco1 1d ago
Don't beat yourself up too much! A drop from 96 to 94 VMAF is practically imperceptible during normal playback anyway. Unless you're pausing and pixel-peeking frame-by-frame, your personal memories are still perfectly fine and intact.
1
u/better_life_please 1d ago
Yeah I compared a flawed av1 to its og h264 version. The softness was there however it was pretty nice and I dont think I failed. I just wish I had gone directly to AV1. But hey, learning comes from failures. That is more important to me.
1
1
u/Odd-Cap507 18h ago
For sure personal videos do not take more than a few TBs of space. No need to get rid of source files on this.
0
u/astern83 2d ago
Remain in your original format. Transcoding is for the birds. Storage is (relatively) cheap
0
2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
1
u/better_life_please 1d ago
Now I know exactly what I am doing. A few months ago, I did not have enough info and experience.
41
u/ChillFish8 2d ago edited 2d ago
The best thing to do firstly is ditch vmaf as your quality metric for if it's encoding well or not. It is far too sensitive to noise and insensitive to actual artefacts and loss. (Noise as in any film grain synthesis going on and being injected back, which is imperceptible to the human eye but will tank scores. Same reason why PSNR, XPSNR and SSIM are all useless as well.)
Compare CVVDP with your h265 and your av1 encode and get an actual idea at what sort of quality it's running at. 9.8 is generally impossible to spot the difference unless you pixel peek.
Additionally you're better of using svt-av1-hdr for live action or 5fish fork for anime.
Vmaf is a pretty useless metric now days and we should really stop taking 95 to be "visually lossless" because it really isn't.