Intel is the first GPU manufacturer to offer AV1 encoding capabilities Arch.-Graphics-Repository. We were lucky enough to have YouTuber EposVox put the encryption to the test on an Arc A380 graphics card. YouTube users have discovered that AV1 is highly efficient for video streams that produce low bitrates. It outperforms all H.264 hardware encoders, such as competitor NVIDIA’s NVENC encoder.
The Intel AV1 encoder outperforms NVIDIA’s competitor NVENC H.264 video codec
Many YouTube videos viewed every day are based on new ones AV1 encoding, Especially in recent years of development. Intel AV1-VideoCodec It was originally developed by the Alliance for Open Media in 2015 as an open-source and royalty-free video encoding format. The format is theoretically revolutionary and free, making it more accessible for users to use online. AV1 produces smaller file sizes than the H.264 format and offers much higher compression capabilities.
In recent years, AV1 has been increasingly adopted in video streaming platforms and is more widely used in graphics card architectures such as the NVIDIA RTX 30 series, AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, and more recently Intel iGPUs. Sony incorporated the technology into the PlayStation 4 Pro gaming system.
Content creation, especially broadcast, did not fully utilize AV1 even when video encoding was available. Current graphics engines do not support the AV1 encoder engine. The program allows the system processor to use the AV1 codec. However, other than recent Intel graphics cards, no hardware has been developed that can properly accelerate AV1 encoding.
In the video above, EposVox deploys the Intel AV1 encoder and tests the technology with multiple H.264 encoders. Tests included AMD’s AMF, Intel’s Quick Sync, NVIDIA NVENC, and software options available in broadcast packages such as: B. OBS broadcast software.
The YouTuber used Netflix’s VMAF benchmarking tool, which allows users to analyze video quality by rating it from 0 (considered impossible to watch) to 100 (best video quality imaginable). The benchmarking tool compares video quality with compressed video and tests at 3.5 Mbps, 6 Mbps and 8 Mbps.
The video used is footage from Battlefield 2042. At 3.5 Mbps, Intel’s AV1 video encoder scored 83, while at 6 Mbps it scored 90 out of 100 available. On the other hand, NVIDIA NVENC scored 71 at 3.5Mbps, but 85 points at 8Mbps. AMD and its AMF encoder scored 76 and 87 respectively, followed by NVIDIA and Intel’s Quick Sync encoder. Intel currently uses a quick sync encoder on the Alder Lake platform.
Benchmark tests created by EposVox show that the Intel AV1 video codec has a 16 percent increase in performance, better than NVIDIA and AMD.
OBS’s software-based H.264 encoder preset delivered amazing results with x264 VerySlow. The integrated program provided 78 points at 3.5 Mbit/s and 88 points at 6 Mbit/s. However, this is not a viable format for broadcasting, so it is best for broadcasters to avoid the setup altogether.
As EposVox educates users about streaming in general, it’s worth noting that 3.5Mbps is more accessible to viewers and is a great setup when using Intel and AV1 codecs. It produces more available streaming quality while using fewer resources than the competition.
