AV1 Encoding

AV1 is the headline 2024–26 codec story. It's open, royalty-free, ~50% better than H.264 and ~20% better than HEVC, and as of 2026 every major GPU vendor (NVIDIA RTX 4000+, Intel Arc / QSV, AMD RX 7000+, Apple M3+) has hardware encoding. YouTube, Netflix, Twitch enhanced broadcasting, Vimeo, and Cloudflare Stream all accept it. For the broader codec landscape see Encoding & Codecs. For the streaming protocols carrying AV1 see Streaming Protocols. For player support see Media Players.

Software encoders

• ★ SVT-AV1 — BSD OSS; the Intel + Netflix encoder; the best speed/quality balance in 2026 by a wide margin. Multi-threaded, multi-tile, presets 0–13. Default software AV1 encoder. FFmpeg flag: -c:v libsvtav1.
• ★ SVT-AV1-PSY — community fork of SVT-AV1 with psy-visual tuning; preferred for quality-targeted encodes (animation, fine detail) at slower presets.
• aomenc / libaom-av1 — BSD OSS; AOM reference encoder; the slowest but historically the highest-quality at extreme bitrate-saving. Use only when you have CPU to burn.
• rav1e — BSD OSS Rust encoder; xiph.org; faster than aomenc, slower than SVT-AV1; not the practical choice in 2026.
• VVenC is for VVC, not AV1 — different codec.

Chunked / distributed encoding

• ★ Av1an — GPL OSS; splits a video on scene cuts, encodes chunks in parallel (with SVT-AV1, aomenc, or rav1e), then concatenates. Multi-pass, target-VMAF mode, scene-detection, resume-on-fail. The default for serious VOD AV1 encoding — turns "this 4K movie takes 3 days" into "this 4K movie takes 4 hours."
• rAV1ator CLI — Av1an wrapper for the easy use case.
• NMKODER — Windows GUI for Av1an.
• AV1 Video Encoder (HandBrake / ShutterEncoder) — simpler GUI front-ends to libaom / SVT-AV1.

Hardware AV1 encoders (2026)

• ★ NVIDIA NVENC AV1 — RTX 4000-series and newer; quality is competitive with SVT-AV1 preset 6–8 for live; instantly the default for streamers.
• ★ Intel Arc / QSV AV1 — Arc A-series + 12th-gen+ iGPUs (Alchemist+); excellent quality / power; the best "AV1 on a laptop" story.
• Intel Flex / VPU — datacenter; for transcoding farms (Netflix-shape).
• AMD VCN AV1 — RX 7000+ and newer iGPUs; quality has improved, still slightly behind NVENC.
• ★ Apple VideoToolbox AV1 — M3 and newer; AV1 hardware encode on Mac; M2 was AV1 decode-only.
• iPhone 15 Pro / 16 Pro+ — AV1 hardware decode and (16 Pro+) encode.

When to pick AV1

• VOD master archive at the smallest file size that's still future-proof — yes, SVT-AV1 preset 4–6 with two-pass.
• Streaming live to Twitch/YouTube — yes, if you're on RTX 4000+ / Arc / M3+ and the platform supports AV1 (Twitch enhanced broadcasting requires partner; YouTube has accepted AV1 for years).
• Web video on a modern site — yes; serve AV1 to capable browsers, fall back to H.264. <source type="video/mp4; codecs=av01.0.05M.08"> then a <source type="video/mp4"> H.264.
• Apple-only delivery — HEVC may still play nicer with iOS Safari for HDR; AV1 decode landed iPhone 15 Pro+ and Apple TV 4K (3rd gen 2022+).
• Editing timeline — no; AV1 is a delivery codec; transcode to ProRes / DNxHR proxies.

When to skip AV1

• Twitch standard ingest (non-partner) — RTMP forces H.264 today.
• Pre-2022 phones / TVs — AV1 hardware decode is missing; software decode is heavy.
• Editing timeline — see above; not a mezzanine codec.

Tuning quick reference

• CRF: 18–22 (very high quality), 23–28 (web sweet spot), 30–35 (small mobile).
• SVT-AV1 preset: 0–3 (archival), 4–6 (VOD sweet spot), 7–10 (fast / live), 11–13 (real-time).
• Two-pass for size-targeted deliverables; CRF for quality-targeted.
• Tile / row threading: --tile-columns 2 --tile-rows 1 for 4K; helps decoders multi-thread.
• Keyint matches your fps × ~5 s for streaming, ×10 for VOD.

Common FFmpeg recipes

• Quality VOD encode (SVT-AV1): ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 28 -preset 5 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k out.webm
• Animation / fine detail: ffmpeg -i in.mkv -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 25 -preset 4 -svtav1-params tune=0:film-grain=8 out.mkv
• NVENC AV1 live: ffmpeg -i ... -c:v av1_nvenc -preset p5 -b:v 6M -maxrate 6M -bufsize 12M -c:a aac out.flv
• Av1an chunked: av1an -i in.mp4 -e svt-av1 -v "--preset 4 --crf 28" -o out.mkv

Av1an target-VMAF mode

A killer pattern: tell Av1an "encode at whatever CRF achieves VMAF 95" and let it bisect per chunk. Same perceptual quality, smaller files than picking a fixed CRF.

av1an -i in.mp4 -e svt-av1 --target-quality 95 --vmaf-res 1920x1080 -o out.mkv

OBS Studio AV1 streaming (2026)

• OBS 30+ exposes NVENC AV1, QSV AV1, AMF AV1 in the encoder dropdown.
• Twitch enhanced broadcasting (multitrack) routes AV1 / HEVC for partners; standard ingest is still H.264.
• YouTube Live ingests AV1 happily.
• Kick / Owncast / your own MediaMTX accept whatever codec; H.264 still gives you broadest player compatibility on viewer side.

Pick this if…

• Default software AV1 encoder: SVT-AV1 (or SVT-AV1-PSY for quality).
• Quality über alles, CPU-rich: aomenc.
• Big VOD archive job: Av1an + SVT-AV1.
• GUI batch: HandBrake (now SVT-AV1 backed) or ShutterEncoder.
• Live streaming AV1: NVENC AV1 (RTX 4000+) or QSV AV1 (Arc / 12th-gen+).
• Mac AV1 encode: M3+ VideoToolbox.
• Web delivery sweet-spot: SVT-AV1 preset 6, CRF 28, with H.264 fallback.
• Future-proof an archive in 2026: AV1 master + ProRes proxies.