Handbrake (.265)
HandBrake is a free and open-source transcoder for digital video files, originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit. Since then it has continued to evolve. Included in its list of features is the ability to transcode existing video from .264/MPEG-4 AVC to .265/HEVC. For this test we are using a one hour length 4K x264 file and using the H.265 MKV 1080p30 preset transcoding it to 1080p resolution.
PSY-Handbrake (AV1)
While the default version of HandBrake does indeed do a decent job at AV1 encoding, a fork of it integrates SVT-AV1-PSY into it with all the necessary patches applied to it to enhance AV1 encoding with psycho-visual optimizations. Using the same one hour length 4K x264 file as the previous handbrake test this time we are using a custom archival level AV1 tune to transcode it into an AV1 file with 1080p resolution. To be precise we start with all dimesnions set to 1080P, cropping set to automatic, optimal size ticked, all filters turned off, audio set to transcode to opus 640kb, Constant Quality set to 6 FR, frame rate set to same as source, variable frame rate, color range set to same as source, encoder preset set to 2 and for the advanced options “tune=3:enable-psy=1:psy-rd=0.3:spy-rd=0.8:enable-variance-boost=1:variance-boost-strength=2:enable-qm=1:qm-min=8:enable-dlf=1:enable-tf=2:tf-strength=1:noise-adaptive-filtering=1:adaptive-quantization=2:quant-offset=0.3:lookahead=60:keyint=24:min-keyint=24:max-bframes=6:hierarchical-levels=5:enable-cdef=1:mbr=25m:mbr-overshoot-pct=50:mbr-undershoot-pct=20:film-grain-denoise=0:film-grain=0:qp-scale-compress-strength=1.25:restor=psy”. This is a custom tune that will bring even an overclocked 9950X to its knees, but will (typically) result in a VMAF score of 99.5 or higher (with some minor encode to encode tweaking) archival grade backup.
