Intel's SVT-AV1 1.7 Video Encoder Delivers Faster Performance

The Intel-led SVT-AV1 open-source AV1 video encoder is out with a major release that delivers on more performance improvements across the board.

SVT-AV1 1.7 is the new release that is another step forward for CPU-based AV1 video encoding. The release highlights for SVT-AV1 1.7 include:

- Improve the tradeoffs for the random access mode across presets MR-M13:
- Quality improvements across all presets and metrics ranging from 0.3% to 4.5% in BD-rate
- Spacing between presets [M1-M6] has been adjusted to account for the tradeoff improvements achieved
- As a user guidance when comparing v1.7 vs v1.6 in a convexhull encoding setup:
- v1.7.0 M2 is now at similar quality levels as v1.6.0 M1 while being ~50% faster
- v1.7.0 M3 is now at similar quality levels as v1.6.0 M2 while being ~50% faster
- v1.7.0 M4 is now at similar quality levels as v1.6.0 M3 while being ~40% faster
- v1.7.0 M5 is now at similar quality levels as v1.6.0 M4 while being ~30% faster
- v1.7.0 M6 is now at similar quality levels as v1.6.0 M5 while being ~25% faster
- Added an experimental tune SSIM mode yielding ~3-4% additional SSIM BD-rate gains (!2109)

SVT-AV1 1.7 can be downloaded from AOMediaCodec's GitLab.

With all the performance improvements noted, I also fired up some benchmarks on my end to see how the v1.7 release compares to the v1.6 release while using the same build options and same video encode settings.





Indeed seeing some nice speed-ups though in a few cases (particularly at 1080p) there were also some regressions. In any event, overall SVT-AV1 continues to move in the right direction and is the most performant AV1 encoder I've seen with testing across a wide range of processors.