zlacker

On a related note, why are release groups not putting out AV1 WEB-DLs? Most 4K stuff is h265 now but if AV1 is supplied without re-encoding surely that would be better?

>>ls612+(OP)
Because pirates are unaffected by the patent situation with H.265.

>>ls612+(OP)
I looked into this before, and the short answer is that release groups would be allowed to release in AV1, but the market seems to prefer H264 and H265 because of compatibility and release speed. Encoding AV1 to an archival quality takes too long, reduces playback compatibility, and doesn't save that much space.

There also are no scene rules for AV1, only for H265 [1]

[1] https://scenerules.org/html/2020_X265.html

>>Dwedit+K1
But isn’t AV1 just better than h.265 now regardless of the patents? The only downside is limited compatibility.

>>avidia+W1
Yeah I’m talking about web-dl though not a rip so there is no encoding necessary.

>>ls612+(OP)
Player compatibility. Netflix can use AV1 and send it to the devices that support it while sending H265 to those that don't. A release group puts out AV1 and a good chunk of users start avoiding their releases because they can't figure out why it doesn't play (or plays poorly).

>>ls612+32
Encoding my 40TB library to AV1 with software encoding without losing quality would take more then a year of not multiple years, consume lots of power while doing this, to save a little bit of storage. Granted, after a year of non stop encoding I would save a few TB of space. But it think it is cheaper to buy a new 20TB hard drive than the electricity used for the encoding.

>>ls612+32
I avoid av1 downloads when possible because I don’t want to have to figure out how to disable film grain synthesis and then deal with whatever damage that causes to apparent quality on a video that was encoded with it in mind. Like I just don’t want any encoding that supports that, if I can stay away from it.

>>avidia+W1
> Encoding AV1 to an archival quality takes too long

With the SVT-AV1 encoder you can achieve better quality in less time versus the x265 encoder. You just have to use the right presets. See the encoding results section:

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of...

>>ls612+(OP)
h.264 has near-universal device support and almost no playback issues at the expensive of slightly larger file sizes. h.265 and av1 give you 10-bit 4K but playback on even modest laptops can become choppy or produce render artifacts. I tried all three, desperately wanting av1 to win but Jellyfin on a small streaming server just couldn't keep up.

>>phanta+O7
In MPV it's just "F1 vf toggle format:film-grain=no" in the input config. And I prefer AV1 because of this, almost everything looks better without that noise.

You can also include "vf=format:film-grain=no" in the config itself to start with no film grain by default.

>>phanta+O7
What's wrong with film grain synthesis? Most film grain in modern films is "fake" anyway (The modern VFX pipeline first removes grain, then adds effects, and lastly re-adds fake grain), so instead of forcing the codec to try to compress lots of noise (and end up blurring lots of it away), we can just have the codec encode the noisless version and put the noise on after.

>>phanta+O7
With HEVC you just don't have the option to disable film grain because it's burned into the video stream.

>>ls612+(OP)
I'm not in the scene anymore, but for my own personal encoding, at higher quality settings, AV1 (rav1e or SVT; AOM was crazy slow) doesn't significantly beat out x265 for most sources.

FGS makes a huge difference at moderately high bitrates for movies that are very grainy, but many people seem to really not want it for HQ sources (see sibling comments). With FGS off, it's hard to find any sources that benefit at bitrates that you will torrent rather than stream.

>>avidia+W1
I'm surprised it took so long for CRF to dethrone 2-pass. We used to use 2-pass primarily so that files could be made to fit on CDs.

>>Wowfun+Xb
I’m not looking to disable film grain, if it’s part of the source.

>>coppsi+sb
I watch almost everything in Infuse on Apple TV or in my browser, though.

>>adgjls+Ab
I watch a lot of stuff from the first 110ish years of cinema. For the most recent 25, and especially 15… yeah I dunno, maybe, but easier to just avoid it.

I do sometimes end up with av1 for streaming-only stuff, but most of that looks like shit anyway, so some (more) digital smudging isn’t going to make it much worse.

>>ls612+32
HW support for av1 is still behind h265. There's a lot of 5-10 year old hw that can play h265 but not av1. Second, there is also a split bw Dovi and HDR(+). Is av1 + Dovi a thing? Blu rays are obviously h265. Overall, h265 is the common denominator for all UHD content.

>>phanta+yd
Even for pre-digital era movies, you want film grain. You just want it done right (which not many places do to be fair).

The problem you see with AV1 streaming isn't the film grain synthesis; it's the bitrate. Netflix is using film grain synthesis to save bandwidth (e.g. 2-5mbps for 1080p, ~20mbps for 4k), 4k bluray is closer to 100mbps.

If the AV1+FGS is given anywhere close to comparable bitrate to other codecs (especially if it's encoding from a non-compressed source like a high res film scan), it will absolutely demolish a codec that doesn't have FGS on both bitrate and detail. The tech is just getting a bad rap because Netflix is aiming for minimal cost to deliver good enough rather than maximal quality.

>>ls612+(OP)
I've seen some on private sites. My guess is they are not popular enough yet. Or pirates are using specific hardware to bypass Widevine encryption (like an Nvidia Shield and burning keys periodically) that doesn't easily get the AV1 streams.

>>breve+Z9
Yeah, is there any good(and simple)guide for SVT-AV1 settings? I tried to convert many of my stuff to it but you really need to put a lot of time to figure out the correct settings for your media, and it becomes more difficult if your media is in mixed formats, encodings etc.

>>Dwedit+K1
Everyone is affected by that mess, did you miss the recent news about Dell and HP dropping HEVC support in hardware they have already shipped? Encoders might not care about legal purity of the encoding process, but they do have to care about how it's going to be decoded. I like using proper software to view my videos, but it's a rarity afaik.

>>ls612+(OP)
I'm seeing releases pop up on Pirate Bay with AV1 this year.

>>phanta+7d
Does AV1 add it if it's not part of the source?

>>bubble+Me
> Blu rays are obviously h265

Most new UHD, yes, but otherwise BRD primarily use h264/avc

>>avidia+W1
AV1 is the king of ultra-low bitrates, but as you go higher — and not even that much higher — HEVC becomes just as good, if not more. Publicly-available AV1 encoders (still) have a tendency to over-flatten anything that is low-contrast enough, while x265 is much better at preserving visual energy.

This problem is only just now starting to get solved in SVT-AV1 with the addition of community-created psychovisual optimizations... features that x264 had over 15 years ago!

>>dd_xpl+4r
I do a lot of AV1 encoding. Here's a couple of guides for encoding with SVT-AV1 from enthusiast encoding groups:

https://wiki.x266.mov/docs/encoders/SVT-AV1

https://jaded-encoding-thaumaturgy.github.io/JET-guide/maste...

>>ls612+(OP)
Smaller PT sites usually allow it

Bigger PT sites with strict rules do not allow it yet and are actively discussing/debating it.Netflix Web-DLs being AV1 is definitely pushing that. The codec has to be a select-able option during upload.

>>Mashim+dv
I dunno, but if there is grain in the source it may erase it (discarding information) then invent new grain (noise) later.

>>phanta+Kh1
I'm skeptical of this (I think they avoid adding grain to the AV1 stream which they add to the other streams--of course all grain is artificial in modern times), but even if true--like, all grain is noise! It's random noise from the sensor. There's nothing magical about it.

>>Wowfun+tD1
The grain’s got randomness because distribution and size of grains is random, but it’s not noise, it’s the “resolution limit” (if you will) of the picture itself. The whole picture is grain. The film is grain. Displaying that is accurately displaying the picture. Erasing it for compression’s sake is tossing out information, and adding it back later is just an effect to add noise.

I’m ok with that for things where I don’t care that much about how it looks (do I give a shit if I lose just a little detail on Happy Gilmore? Probably not) and agree that faking the grain probably gets you a closer look to the original if you’re gonna erase the grain for better compression, but if I want actual high quality for a film source then faked grain is no good, since if you’re having to fake it you definitely already sacrificed a lot of picture quality (because, again, the grain is the picture, you only get rid of it by discarding information from the picture)

>>phanta+BQ1
If you’re watching something from the 70s, sure. I would hope synthesized grain isn’t being used in this case.

But for anything modern, the film grain was likely added during post-production. So it really is just random noise, and there’s no reason it can’t be recreated (much more efficiently) on the client-side.

>>avidia+W1
All those rules and I still can't get subtitles on many shows and movies