Intel To Ring In 2022 With New, Faster AV1 Encoder Release

The Intel Core i9 12900K test system was running Ubuntu 21.10 with GCC 11.2. The SVT-AV1 0.8.8-rc2 performance was benchmarked against the prior releases 0.8.7, 0.8.6, 0.8.5, and 0.8.4.

Like seen on the Ice Lake server, the SVT-AV1 0.8.8 release is a fair amount faster than v0.8.7 (and prior) while really juicing the performance at the new preset levels of 9 through 12.

For 1080p as well, SVT-AV1 0.8.8 (rc2) performance is looking like a very nice upgrade over v0.6.7 from May.

SVT-AV1 0.8.8 is planned for release in January. Those wishing to build the code early in its current state to help in testing and evaluation, the current release candidate is available from the SVT-AV1 GitLab. It will be great to see what more optimizations come of Intel's Scalable Video Technology (SVT) encoders in 2022 as well what comes of their countless other open-source projects over the next year.

Update (22 January): This release is now available as SVT-AV1 0.9.