Zeranoe Resolves AV1 Issue; Now Faster Than aomenc.

Related Articles

How Thread Count Impacts Video Encoding Quality, Throughput, and Cost

November 21, 2024

Announcing Free Course on Controlling the AMD MA35D with FFmpeg

November 7, 2024

Choosing the Best Preset for Live Transcoding

November 4, 2024

There are no codec comparisons. There are only codec implementation comparisons.

October 15, 2024

Previous tests presented here showed that a Windows version of FFmpeg compiled by Zeranoe was about four times slower than a version compiled by a colleague who works in an OTT organization. Since then, Miguel Perez contacted the FFmpeg organization and Zeranoe, who researched the issue, recompiled, and created a new download that resolves the problem. 

To test the new version, I encoded two files on this computer and averaged the results.

Here they are with encoding strings below.

So, the updated Zeranoe code was actually about 18% faster than the AOM encoder, and that doesn’t count the time and of converting your source input files to YUV. Every version of FFmpeg that I’ve used on Windows came from Zeranoe – it’s great that they were able to resolve this problem within two days of learning of it.

Here are the encoding strings:

FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -y -i football_10.mp4 -c:v libaom-av1 -strict -2 -b:v 1890K -g 60 -keyint_min 60 -sc_threshold 0 -row-mt 1 -tile-columns 1 -tile-rows 0 -threads 16 -cpu-used 8 -pass 1 -f matroska NUL &

ffmpeg -y -i football_10.mp4 -c:v libaom-av1 -strict -2 -b:v 1890K -maxrate 3780K -bufsize 3780k -g 60 -keyint_min 60 -sc_threshold 0 -row-mt 1 -tile-columns 1 -an -tile-rows 0 -threads 16 -cpu-used 3 -pass 2 football_ffmpeg_Zeranoe.mkv

aomenc

aomenc.exe football_10.y4m --width=1920 --height=1080 --fps=30000/1000 --passes=2 --lag-in-frames=25 --end-usage=vbr --target-bitrate=1890 --threads=16 --cpu-used=3 --kf-min-dist=60 --kf-max-dist=60 -o football_aomenc.webm

x265

ffmpeg -y -i Football_10.mp4 -c:v libx265 -threads 16 -preset veryslow -tune ssim -x265-params bitrate=1890:keyint=60:min-keyint=60:scenecut=0:open-gop=0:pass=1 -f mp4 NUL &

ffmpeg -y -i Football_10.mp4 -c:v libx265 -threads 16 -preset veryslow -tune ssim -x265-params bitrate=1890:vbv-maxrate=3780:vbv-bufsize=3780:keyint=60:min-keyint=60:scenecut=0:open-gop=0:pass=2 Football_x265_ssim_4.mp4

x264

ffmpeg -y -i Football_10.mp4 -c:v libx264 -threads 16  -b:v 1890K -preset veryslow -g 60 -keyint_min 60 -sc_threshold 0 -tune ssim -pass 1 -f mp4 NUL &

ffmpeg -i Football_10.mp4 -c:v libx264 -threads 16 -b:v 1890K -maxrate 3780K -bufsize 3780k -preset veryslow -g 60 -keyint_min 60 -sc_threshold 0 -tune ssim -pass 2 Football_x264_ssim_4.mp4

The article itself will consider 16 different videos in five genres (animations, games, sports, movies, other) and two additional AV1 codecs, Aurora from Visionular and SVT-AV1 from Intel. It probably will appear in the September time frame.