AV1 vs H.265 HEVC for storage?

[00:00] there has been a lot of Buzz lately

[00:02] about av1 an open source and

[00:05] royalty-free video Codec developed by

[00:07] the alliance for open media a non-profit

[00:10] industry Consortium in the same time my

[00:12] storage server is almost full at 80

[00:14] occupied capacity much of that has been

[00:17] taken up by 4K videos from recent years

[00:19] so I'm currently thinking about how I

[00:22] can reduce this space the videos are

[00:24] Random clips from here and there travel

[00:27] and family memories for example they are

[00:29] not intended for future editing so I can

[00:32] reduce their quality and size with a

[00:34] modern codec but which codec at the

[00:37] moment the two most popular codecs are

[00:39] av-1 and h.265 let's talk a little bit

[00:42] about them

[00:46] av1 or AO media video 1 was developed as

[00:49] a successor to vp9 a coding format

[00:52] developed by Google the founders of

[00:54] Alliance for open media are Amazon Cisco

[00:57] Google Intel Microsoft Mozilla Netflix

[01:00] The Alliance saw expansion of its member

[01:02] list since Inception in 2015. AMD arm

[01:06] Nvidia Adobe Facebook Apple Samsung

[01:10] Huawei Intel and others joined in the

[01:13] following years

[01:17] h.265 or MPEG H part 2 or hevc or high

[01:22] efficiency video coding is another

[01:24] modern and popular video Codec it is

[01:26] developed by joint collaborative team on

[01:28] video coding and was first made

[01:30] available in 2013. the majority of

[01:33] active patent contributions towards the

[01:35] development of the h.265 format came

[01:38] from five organizations Samsung General

[01:41] Electric M and K Holdings NTT and JVC

[01:45] Kenwood the concept for h.265 was

[01:48] largely an extension of h.264 but

[01:51] introduces numerous improvements during

[01:53] the encoding process the big difference

[01:55] compared to av1 is that h.265 is not

[01:58] royalty free it has a very complicated

[02:01] and expensive royalty structure The

[02:03] Joint shareholders from MPEG La hevc

[02:06] advance and valus media which including

[02:09] Ericsson Panasonic Qualcomm sharp and

[02:11] Sony all have different license fees on

[02:14] h.265

[02:17] foreign

[02:23] them and will not edit them in the

[02:25] future the videos are basically from

[02:28] three cameras GoPro Hero 9 Panasonic gh5

[02:32] and Panasonic G7 all the footage from

[02:35] them is

[02:36] 2160p 4K resolution with different bit

[02:39] rates all the original footage is

[02:41] encoded in h.264 the predecessor of

[02:45] h.265

[02:46] I've been reading for the last few days

[02:48] about which codec to choose but I can't

[02:50] come to a decision all the hype now is

[02:53] about av1 but this does not guarantee

[02:56] that it is the better choice

[02:58] h.265 is older and more developed av1

[03:01] promises that it's the codec of the

[03:03] future

[03:06] I decided to conduct a test using three

[03:08] source files one from each camera for

[03:11] software I am using handbrake free and

[03:14] open source converting tool for encoding

[03:16] I am using CPU only Hardware encoding

[03:19] trades quality for Speed I'm not in a

[03:22] hurry more info about Hardware encoders

[03:25] can be found at eposvox video

[03:28] there are a lot of settings for each

[03:30] encoder I haven't delved into them too

[03:32] much for Quality I sat a bit rate of 15

[03:35] megabits per second the source file in

[03:38] this example is from the GoPro camera

[03:40] with original bit rate of 100 megabits

[03:42] and 800 megabytes file size let's start

[03:46] with h.265 using x265 encoder the

[03:51] encoder preset was on default slower

[03:53] speed means better quality in theory the

[03:56] other settings can be seen on the

[03:57] screenshot on my quad-core AMD Zen 2 CPU

[04:01] the encoding speed is 002.8 frames per

[04:04] second and the final file size is 120

[04:08] megabytes with av1 codec the encoder

[04:11] preset is at six the encoding speed is

[04:14] slower at 0 0 1.7 FPS and the final file

[04:18] size is 122 megabytes or about the same

[04:21] size as h.265

[04:27] in both cases it makes a big difference

[04:29] in file size compared to the original

[04:31] Source but what about playback although

[04:34] it's not important to me I decided to

[04:36] check which codec is more CPU intensive

[04:39] during playback av1 puts more strain on

[04:42] the CPU but that's probably to be

[04:44] expected it's important to note that I

[04:47] am not sure does my hardware and

[04:48] software have a GPU decoding during

[04:50] playback in terms of quality I can't see

[04:53] a differences between the two encoded

[04:55] files but I am not pixel peering

[04:58] another thing I wonder is if and how

[05:00] much the original file matters if the

[05:03] source files are encoded with h.264

[05:05] maybe h.265 is the better choice to

[05:08] re-encode because probably h.265 is more

[05:11] similar to h.264 than av1 to h265

[05:21] . in the end I'll probably go with the

[05:23] h.265 it's interesting to note that a

[05:26] successor to the h.265 has been in

[05:28] development for some time the name is

[05:31] h.266 or versatile video coding or VVC

[05:35] of course it promises better compression

[05:37] but at the moment it's not available in

[05:39] handbrake

[05:40] ax-266 encoder is expected to be

[05:43] publicly released in second half of 2023

[05:45] but it will take time to be perfected

[05:53] foreign