ward on Nostr: I've been messing with AV1 this week. So, let have a look at some files. The first ...
I've been messing with AV1 this week. So, let have a look at some files.
The first image: The 1080p AV1 is 7.6 GB and the 4K BD is over 50 GB. I think it looks pretty good, but the grain is far from perfect, notice in the dark and light areas...
Picture 2 is a 1080p 8.99 GB x265 on the left and the 4k BD again on the right. So, the grain is worse here, but the contrast is better.
Why does the smaller AV1 have better grain? Grain is the most important thing when it comes to file size (behind resolution). Grain requires a ton of information. Most algorithms just remove most of the grain... and for modern shows that were not shot on film, this sometimes doesn't matter much. They look fine unless the scene is really dark, bright, or contrasty. But for film and stuff that was shot with grain, it makes a huge difference. You can use a grain setting when rendering x265; it looks amazing, but the files are 3-5x larger. So, AV1 is a little different. They are removing the grain then synthesizing new grain. It's kinda genius, but it's far from perfect. They first do a softening layer, which looks very ugly imo. What good is grain if everything looks like clay. There is something you can do, and I've done this here... on Handbrake, use the options: film-grain-denoise=0:film-grain=20
This tells handbrake to skip the de-noising then apply the grain after. My big problem now is that I want a little more grain, but I think the grain is what is making the image look slightly washed out when compared to the x.265. Also, the AV1 takes like 12+ hours to encode on my 5950x CPU. It's a mess. As it stands, I think the x.265 does look better due to the contrast, but the grain does look good with AV1. Hopefully this process will get better, because as of now, it's not worth the time.
#av1 #handbrake #filmnoise #filmgrain #rendering #encoding #x265 #bluray #bdrip
The first image: The 1080p AV1 is 7.6 GB and the 4K BD is over 50 GB. I think it looks pretty good, but the grain is far from perfect, notice in the dark and light areas...
Picture 2 is a 1080p 8.99 GB x265 on the left and the 4k BD again on the right. So, the grain is worse here, but the contrast is better.
Why does the smaller AV1 have better grain? Grain is the most important thing when it comes to file size (behind resolution). Grain requires a ton of information. Most algorithms just remove most of the grain... and for modern shows that were not shot on film, this sometimes doesn't matter much. They look fine unless the scene is really dark, bright, or contrasty. But for film and stuff that was shot with grain, it makes a huge difference. You can use a grain setting when rendering x265; it looks amazing, but the files are 3-5x larger. So, AV1 is a little different. They are removing the grain then synthesizing new grain. It's kinda genius, but it's far from perfect. They first do a softening layer, which looks very ugly imo. What good is grain if everything looks like clay. There is something you can do, and I've done this here... on Handbrake, use the options: film-grain-denoise=0:film-grain=20
This tells handbrake to skip the de-noising then apply the grain after. My big problem now is that I want a little more grain, but I think the grain is what is making the image look slightly washed out when compared to the x.265. Also, the AV1 takes like 12+ hours to encode on my 5950x CPU. It's a mess. As it stands, I think the x.265 does look better due to the contrast, but the grain does look good with AV1. Hopefully this process will get better, because as of now, it's not worth the time.
#av1 #handbrake #filmnoise #filmgrain #rendering #encoding #x265 #bluray #bdrip