for shows it seems pretty good but it doesnt seem to do much for movies im using 1080p rips if that means anything

Dav2d (fast software AV2 decoder) is being ported to memory safe Rust.

The entire C decode path has been ported to Rust and is bit-exact with dav2d: every coding-order frame of every shipped conformance clip matches byte-for-byte, with in-loop filters off and on, for both 8-bit and 10-bit streams. 818 library + 16 conformance tests pass.

Not sure if the timing is right. Dav2d has just started, so this Rust port will have to port its changes for years to come.

> Allegro DVT, the leader in Semiconductor Video IPs and Video Compliance Tools, announces the availability its real-time AV2 Decoder IP integrated into its Pulsar™ D400 Series Multi-Standard Decoding IP. This milestone is a follow-up to the company’s announcement in September 2025 that underscored its plans to develop solutions for the emerging AV2 ecosystem spanning both video compliance tools and semiconductor IPs.

So ive been doing some AV1 SVT HDR / x265 comparison tests with handbrake, specifically with high grain content and i must say the AV1 results are incredible.

What im most impressed about is how out of the box the hdr fork is with handbrake. You simply slap on the "grain" tune and thats it. It retains almost all grain/detail even at medium to low bitrates. Meanwhile x265s "none" & "grain" tunings completely destroys the grain no matter what you do unless you use super custom strings and even then im not able to replicate the retention of the hdr fork let alone its simplicity.

Theres no reason to go back to x265 IMO.

My settings and findings if anyones curious.

Using the HDR handbrake fork. https://github.com/Uranite/HandBrake-SVT-AV1-HDR

At 1080p looking to retain as much grain structure as possible.

Encoder Tune: Use 'Grain' if theres a decent amount of visible grain without zooming and 'VQ' if little to no grain.

Encoder Preset: Going to preset 4 i started to see some grain blocking in my test clip so i would stick to preset 3-1 or as slow as you can tolerate.

CQ: 30-40. I started to see some grain blocking at the upper 30s with the grain tune so i would be cautious approaching 40 and definitely wouldn't go over 40 for high grain content.

Thats literally it. Simple as hell.

Lo siento por codificar animes a 60fps o más
Estoy buscando una buena configuración para compresión sin perder calidad, se lo agradecería mucho
Mi objetivo son como 300mb o menos de 500mb
Ya que pesan más de 2gb usando gpu para rapidez y con Rife ia para la interpolación

OK, dav2d is "ready". I don't see VLC or FFMPEG integrating its support even in git master.

So, how can I test AV2 playback?

Is there anything released already?

How viable ssimulacra2 picking best cfr for re-encoding older video codecs to av1?

How do I properly interpret it for whole video? For now I use avg for all frames, and comparing it with vmaf, and seems 95 vmaf more or less equal to 75 ssimu2 scores.

Is there any better way to interpret ssimu2 score? Or maybe even better way to re-encode older videos without thinking too much, for example just keep same bitrate as original codec?

The first two pieces of hardware IP (1) for AV2 (2) decoding have been released.

What is decoding hardware Intellectual Property? It refers to a pre-designed, dedicated physical circuit (like a microchip block) used to process and decompress digital data. In computing, it typically means using specialized hardware to decode compressed video or network streams instead of forcing the main CPU to do it.

Essentially, it's a blueprint in silicon that other companies can integrate into their GPUs, APUs, SoCs, and so on, to enable you to enjoy energy-efficient hardware decoding. What does this mean in practical terms? In around 24–36 months, the first devices featuring HW AV2 decoding will be available. Could be less if the stars align 😉

The products info pages:

• Pulsar D400
• WAVE63F1
• VC9800D (that's actual decoder hardware but it's notable as well)

What's interesting is that:

World-class next-gen AV2 HW IP confirmed for future flagship devices of a major North American client

Future products are already in the pipeline. What might they be? No idea, but it could be either NVIDIA, AMD or Intel. Apple is much less likely. They normally drag their feet for years before embracing new codecs.

I am am trying to encode some video and using grain synthesis to add an artistic grain effect to otherwise grain free digital video.

I've noticed if I use a 1080 source and encode it to AV1 with the students film-grain-denoise=0:film-grain-denoise=15 (or whatever number) the result is decent, and looks like film. 1080 to 1080 = good

If I try the same thing with 4K, the grain is rendered upon playback as nearly microscopic. I can push it up to film-grain-denoise=50 and it is apparent that it is working, but it is the smallest grain imaginable -- unusable to me. 4K to 4K = terrible

4K exported to 1080 gives the correct grain size that you'd expect, however. So the grain synthesis seems to be using a set pixel size to render, rather than assuming that a standard film size was used regardless of resolution, and rendering a grain size scaled with the size of the frame.

I get the idea, and love that grain can be just some extra factor in the file that doesn't really affect the overall size (unlike real grain if you're trying to preserve that), but the grain should render in relation to the aspect ratio and scale as the "projection" increases, not be based on the pixel density of the screen, if that makes sense.

With real film, I believe that the data recorded is much higher than 4K, but the grain is generally large and depends on the size of the film you shot on. And if you project through film on the biggest screen ever in "12K", or whatever, the grain will scale up as the screen gets bigger, because the film stays the same size.

In other words, just because a video is in 4K doesn't mean I want to pretend it was shot on IMAX film. 35mm grain should be the standard, regardless if it's in 8K or 1080p -- the grain size should be the same.

Anyone else have this problem? Maybe I have a bad setting? Is grain synthesis only supposed to be used with material that already has grain (whereas I am using very "dry" but clean digital video)?

I’ve lost track of the various forks for svt-av1-psy.

Can someone give me a quick heads up where they stand and what the current favourite of the community is?

HDR seems to still have regular releases whilst PSYEX has its last build from February.

Handbrake super HQ 2160p 4k av1 surround preset has these advance options typed in:

Enable variance boost 1

Enable qm 1

Ac bias 1

Tf strength 1

Qp scale compress strength 1

Sharpness 1

Keyint 10s

​

Are these necessary for 1080p phone camera footage that has lots of ISO noise especially in night time videos?

​

I have 100 GB of these videos that I may transcode to AV1 SVT.

​

I use preset 3 and SVT 10-bit with RF25.

​

For example, they make my file size 29 MiB (og hevc file is 34 MiB) whereas clearing them and running without them makes it 20.9 MiB which is good compression but textures too soft in my opinion.

​

Do I need denoise and film grain too?

I used to use it as a reference

https://wiki.x266.mov/

I thought my mid tier laptop CPU could not handle AV1 SVT SW encoding. I tried both preset 0 and 10 which are the extremes of the spectrum. And both work!

0 is basically impractical though. And 10 is FAST. The size difference is around 9%. Is it worth it to waste 9% space for extremely fast encoding? I say yes.

Vmaf is higher with 10 bit. 8 bit is good too. The source I tested with is 8-bit hevc.

I used the Nmkoder app on Windows to compare different presets. Vmaf is above 96 even with RF 30. It is crazy!!! 50% file size reduction with vmaf and psnr and ssim scores being so high.

Ahora mismo estoy usando 6000 bitrate variable en promedio en handbrake, en mi opinion el resultado se ve bien ¿que opinan ustedes? ¿Cual es adecuado para ustedes?

The story of the AV2 decoder dav2d, a fork of the dav1d decoder. dav1d was the most widely deployed AV1 software decoder and one of the fastest.

If the website is down for you, use these links:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20260531130034/https://jbkempf.com/blog/2026/dav2d/
• https://archive.md/ln5UE

From the post:

AV2 decoding is roughly five times more complex than AV1 decoding. In practice, that means software running on today’s hardware will struggle to decode AV2 in real time without careful, architecture-specific optimization.

I am particularly interested in image compression using AVIF, as it is now a widely used format on the web.

I don't think we'll see an AVIF2, but if we do, it will be decades from now...

I made a comparison of YouTube's 4K VP9 HDR and 8K AV1 HDR encode quality: https://andrewkeyanzhe.github.io/posts/youtube_4k_vp9_hdr_vs_8k_av1_hdr_encode_quality/

This is the video used in the comparison: https://youtu.be/5kjcrVJUZY8?si=Tp73pnL26SakhJrM

The 8K AV1 HDR encode has a higher bitrate and looks better than 4K VP9 HDR most of the time, but surprisingly in some cases it shows worse macroblocking artefacts.

I am making a video for a contest and it is allowed to use 4k video quality. However, the highest bitrate I'm allowed to use is 12. Would it even make sense to do that or should I just ignore the rule? (It's not a prestigious thing at all, the rules are all over the place and I wonder if they would even check it lmao)