[HN Gopher] What I learned about deploying AV1 from two deployers
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What I learned about deploying AV1 from two deployers
Author : breve
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-12-16 10:51 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (streaminglearningcenter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (streaminglearningcenter.com)
| cmbernard333 wrote:
| I have been converting my H265 (HVEC) collection to AV1. I am
| still trying to find the exact parameters for FFMPEG to produce
| the optimal output for the devices I use plex on. Its been a
| little bit of whack a mole so far, but it seems ideal for file
| size when I get it right.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Do you know what plex clients can handle av1 without the server
| having to transcode?
|
| I started looking into converting stuff to AV1 but only
| confirmed that my gpu doesn't support AV1 but does support hevc
| so I stopped there...
| loufe wrote:
| IIUC, it's more about the client hardware that determines
| ability to play without transcoding. You'd have to check the
| mix of devices you have connecting to it and make a judgement
| call.
| blueside wrote:
| I started to convert a lot of my content in AV1 until I
| realized that my Nvidia Shield devices won't play AV1. My $30
| firestick will play them but I do really prefer the Shield. I
| guess I'll wait it out and hope for a new Shield (it's been
| 2019 since Nvidia released one) but i'm not going to hold my
| breath.
| breve wrote:
| > _my Nvidia Shield devices won 't play AV1_
|
| Put VLC on them. See if it works for your AV1 videos.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Because of conversion losses, I have to imagine this is subtly
| very bad.
|
| Every form of lossy compression deleted data. Yes AV1 is more
| efficient but only when working off of high quality originals.
|
| H265 already deleted a ton of data. It can never recover the
| quality loss. Compressing even further can only worsen the
| image.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well its sure gonna get the filesize down though, great HECV
| -> AV1 transcoding success..
| arnaudsm wrote:
| What's the optimal strategy then ? 50 GB Blu-ray remux => 3
| GB AV1 ?
| dragontamer wrote:
| 50GB gives assurances that the BluRays are high quality
| (but not always. I've seen some horrible BluRay
| encodings...)
|
| As long as you are going from high quality sources, you
| should be fine. The issue is each transcoding step is a
| glorified loop-(find something we think humans can't see
| and delete it)
|
| In other words: the AV1 encoder in your example works by
| finding 47GBs of data TO DELETE. It's simply gone,
| vanished. That's how lossy compression works, delete the
| right things and save space.
|
| In my experience, this often deletes purposeful noise out
| of animation (there are often static noise / VHS like
| effects in animation and film to represent flashbacks,
| these lossy decoders think it's actually noise and just
| deleted it all changing the feel of some scenes).
|
| --------
|
| More importantly: what is your plan with the 50GB BluRays?
| When AV2 (or any other future codec) comes out, you'll want
| to work off the 50GB originals and not off the 3GB AV1
| compressed copies.
|
| IMO, just work with the 50GB originals. Back them up, play
| them as is.
|
| I guess AV1 compression is useful if you have a limited
| bandwidth (do you stream them out of your basement, across
| the internet and to your phone or something? I guess AV1 is
| good for that) But for most people just working with the
| 50GB originals is the best plan
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed answer!
| LeFantome wrote:
| While I agree with you, I find that sometimes the
| "experience" can improve.
|
| The most common "artifact" of AV1 is to make things slightly
| more blurry for example. A common H.265 artifact is
| "blockiness". I have re-encoded H.265 to AV1 and not only
| gotten smaller files that playback better on low-end hardware
| but also display less blockiness while still looking high-
| resolution and great colour overall.
|
| I always encode 10 bit colour and fast-decode for re-encoding
| to AV1, even if coming from an 8 bit original.
| dragontamer wrote:
| But then you look at flashback scenes and wonder where the
| noise has gone.
|
| A lot of movies have purposeful noise, blurriness, snow,
| and fake artifacts to represent flashback scenes. One level
| of compression often keeps them okay-ish (like you can tell
| side by side that it's different, but only when you know
| what to look for). But these are the scenes that get
| especially ruined by two layers of compression.
| loufe wrote:
| I've been transcoding my media collection leaving my PC on
| overnight over months, it's great. My biggest issue is client
| support for native playback of AV1, naturally.
|
| For what it's worth, AB-AV1 [1] is a pretty awesome tool
| written in rust which compares random samples from a file at
| different parameters based on their VMAF score [2] (algorithm
| from Netflix for human-perceived visual likeness), choosing
| optimal parameters to save as much space as possible with the
| loss you're willing to stomach, on a file-by-file basis.
|
| Small plug: I made a nice little python GUI wrapper for ab-av1
| [3].
|
| [1] - https://github.com/alexheretic/ab-av1 [2] -
| https://github.com/Netflix/vmaf [3] -
| https://github.com/Loufe/AB-AV1-GUI
| npodbielski wrote:
| What is the difference in size of files? Around?
| mannyv wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there's any noticeable difference between
| 265 and AV1 when coming from the 265 encoding. 265 has already
| thrown a lot of stuff away, so there's not much for AV1 to work
| with.
|
| Maybe if you're going to a lower resolution it would be fine
| (ie: going from 4k 265 to 720p AV1).
| Risse wrote:
| I personally use av1an, and use VMAF target quality of 95 to
| 96. It's been really good and fast.
|
| https://github.com/rust-av/Av1an
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Aside from video, audio compatibility is tricky as well. You
| can do AAC stereo and most things support that but AAC 5.1
| seems to be supported by only some devices so all my video
| files end up getting stereo AAC, 5.1 AAC, and 5.1 DTS to avoid
| live transcoding.
| nickjj wrote:
| I wonder what the video editing story is like.
|
| It would be cool if one day (if not already today?) you could use
| AV1 as a drop-in replacement for h264 for recording with OBS,
| smoothly editing without proxy clips and rendering out highly
| disk size efficient videos that look good.
|
| DaVinci Resolve's free version on Linux does not support h264 but
| apparently does support AV1. Kdenlive supports both. AV1 sounds
| like it would be a great solution for Linux if the above is
| possible.
| shmerl wrote:
| AV1 should work between OBS and Kdenlive.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "We built a billion dollar business on top of ffmpeg" - "did you
| make a donation that you won't even notice on the books, say, a
| measly one million dollars, to ffmpeg?" - "psh, why would we?"
| liiiiiinus wrote:
| Providing open source free of charge is for suckers. Greed is
| good.
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