I'm planning on encoding most of my blu-ray collection (largely 4K) for a Plex server. Right now I'm leaning toward .h265 10-bit... Using some small snippets from various 4K rips, I've mostly landed on the following for my "ideal" settings (when considering file size, quality, and encode time):

• .h265 10-bit

• constant quality: 20RF (possibly 18 or 19 RF in some situations)

• Encoder Preset: Slow

What would be (roughly) "equivalent" settings for AV1? I want to give AV1 a shot just to see how I feel about it. I'm mainly concerned about the constant quality and and encoder preset, but if there are other settings I should think about, let me know!

Hi all. It's often said that you have to choose an agonizing amount of time encoding or use hardware encoding that is super quick, but much lower quality. I think I have found a sweet spot middle ground though, that gives me amazing image quality and encodes faster than real-time (hardware depending).

So I was originally going to go with x265, but it took so long to encode and IMO didn't look better than x264 (though it was smaller). X264 encodes quick, quality is great but file size is pretty big. I have found AV1 best in my testing with all different types of content. A minute of video takes 40 seconds to encode with my 9800x3d and visually I'd say its *nearly* transparent to the source with these settings:

AV 10-SVT. Frame Rate same as source. Encoder Preset: 4. Encoder tune VQ. Encoder Profile Main 10. Encoder level Auto. RF quality 16. Audio E-AC3 960 5.1 Channels, sample rate 48. All English subs and file names carried over.

Advanced settings:

aq-mode=2:enable-variance-boost=1:enable-qm=1:qm-min=0:qm-max=15:keyint=10s:

Just double checking I haven't missed anything? I have checked and all my clients can play direct. Size reduction is around 60% less than source. I was tempted to add some film grain removal, but I don't think there is a setting where it also wouldn't remove fine detail, and I wanted one lot of settings I can apply to everything.

If AV1 isn't an option for anyone looking/learning I'd say high quality x264 Slow is just as viable way to go as well (fast encoding, great quality).

PS thank you for everyone's help over the last week, getting me here. Learned a lot! :)

Update 03/01/26: If I use zoom on vlc player on my 77 inch screen I do get what looks like edge artifacts on the AV1 version that are not present on x264, or x265. Back to drawing board, I think I will just stick to x264 honestly, it seems the most mature codec at a high quality, with a reasonable cpu encode time. That or look at why x265 is taking me four times longer to encode than 264 or AV1 at comparable quality.`

Looking to keep picture quality mostly the same between UHD Blu Ray and AV1.

Especially interested in what people are using in the advanced options box and why they use it.

Guys New to Hand Brake, I dont know how each video settings work induvidually. For Example. In AV1 encode settings:-

1. Encoder Tune

2. Encoder Profile

3. Encoder Level

I recently learnt about the CRF and Preset Settings

Does all these settings compliment each other or work differently if tweaked, or are there any specific setting i should use for certain for 1080p videos and other settings for 4K. Or any settings can be used for any videos.

Tia🙏

Hi all,

I'm new in this "business" and happily noticed my RTX5060Ti-16G can encode into AV1 quite fast compared to CPU-based encoding (Ryzen 7 5700x) on Debian Linux. Now I also learned CPU-based slow encoding brings better quality, better retains details and looking at some comparisons on YT for me it also somehow manages better lights, bright areas (more "striking, lively").

My goal is "visually transparent" conversion of movies of any kind, size reduction is only second prio, so quality first.

Parameters I use:

• Summary ->

  • matroska (mkv)

• Dimensions ->

  • Cropping: None (keeping original res)

  • everything else left on default to keep original aspect ration and resolution

• Filters ->

  • all OFF

• Video ->

  • Video Encoder: AV1 10-bit (SVT) preferred but will also try NVENC just for fun and comparison (and speed gain)

  • Framerate: Same as source (and Variable Framerate checked below)

  • Bitrate (kbps): 32000 (for 4K HDR/DV)

  • Color Range: Same as source

  • Preset: to the far right (-1)

  • Tune: vq (Fast Decode left unchecked)

  • Profile: auto

  • Level: auto

  • Additional Options: lp=6 to let threads run on real cores instead of 'overprovisioning' CPU (8c16t)

• Audio ->

  • Could not have it keep the original audio tracks untouched so deleted all and will mux them into the video-only new .mkv with mkvtoolnix-gui

• Subtitles ->

  • same as with audio, so later with mkvtoolnix-gui

• Chapters ->

  • all well detected, checked as default ON

• Tags ->

  • none

1. Do you agree with above in general ?

2. Can you suggest some best-practice extra settings for visually-identical (visually-transparent) encoding ? Either above and/or into the Additional Options field.

Source are movies so keeping film grain etc. would be important.

What are btw qualitative bitrates for 4K/1080p/720p ?
Something around 32000/8000/2000 kbps ?

Many-many thanks !

So apparently a lot has changed since I last checked in on AV1 and I'm not sure what the 'best' settings are for quality and bitrate. I'm trying to reduce banding / blocking for dark, flat scenes

1. Presets: Seems to have been reworked a bit since 1.5-ish, but its still lower = better. I'm playing around in preset 3~5 territory

2. aq-mode=2: Not sure if its still the most recommended

3. enable-variance-boost=1: Enables variance boost which increases (or reallocates?) bitrate

4. variance-boost-strength=3: How aggressive bits get reallocated. Higher = more aggressive

5. variance-octile=3: How likely bits are to get reallocated. Higher = less likely I think(?)

6. tune=0: I've been seeing people mentioning tune for SSIM so I'm not sure if 0 (VQ) is the way to go

7. hierarchical-levels=5: Higher = better

8. enable-overlays=1: Not sure about this one.

9. CRF vs average bitrate (2 pass): Not sure if CRF is still reccomended

Are there any arguments you'd reccommend? And did I get any of the relationships wrong (ex. higher is actually worse but I said its better).

I've often heard that NVENC offers great speed but lower quality or larger file sizes, so I ran some benchmarks to see for myself. I compared file sizes, compression time, and quality using the FFMetrics tool on my RTX 4070 GPU and AMD 5800X CPU.

I used a 1.8GB H.264 720p video as the source and aimed to compress it to 550MB with a target VMAF score of 90 (a quality measure comparing the original to the compressed version).

Note: These results are based on a single test run, and outcomes may vary depending on your hardware and file types. My goal was fast compression with acceptable quality, prioritizing smaller file sizes.

Results:

1. CPU (H.265, fast, quality 25):

   • 592MB, VMAF: 87.98, took 20 minutes.

2. H.265 NVENC (slow, quality 32):

   • 556MB, VMAF: 87.66, 778 avg fps (97 seconds).

3. AV1 NVENC (medium, quality 38):

   • 558MB, VMAF: 89.62, 1051 avg fps (72 seconds).

AV1 NVENC was the clear winner with faster compression speeds, comparable file size, and better quality.

Conclusion:

If you have an Nvidia GPU, use the AV1 NVENC encoder for fast compression and good quality. I recommend setting quality to 38 with the medium speed preset in Handbrake for optimal results.

In Handbrake you can take the preset that is on Hardware section and just adjust the quality and dimensions you want.