SVT-AV1 4.0 is out as the newest major feature release for this open-source AV1 video encoder that was originally started by Intel as an open-source project and now continuining on thanks to the Alliance For Open Media.

SVT-AV1 4.0 brings some API updates and with the breakage there yields the new 4.0 version. Exciting end-users though will be the continued performance improvements, ARM optimizations, and more with SVT-AV1 4.0:

- Significant improvements in AVIF and still image modes

~5-8x speedup M11-M0 at the same quality levels with tune MS-SSIM

~5-8% BD-Rate improvements at the same complexity with tune MS-SSIM

- Tradeoff improvements for the RTC modes:

~5-15% speedup at similar quality levels in --rtc mode across presets 7 - 11

- Tradeoff improvements for the Random Access mode (VOD use case) showing a 10-25% speedup across presets M7 down to M0 for --fast-decode 1 and 2

- Major feature updates for the visual quality mode with the completion porting all SVT-AV1-PSY applicable features for --tune vq for video and --tune iq for avif:

Added AC Bias, a psychovisual feature that improves detail preservation and film grain retention

- Update S-Frame support to allow setting it in a specific decode order option and with more qp options

- Further Arm Neon and SVE2 optimizations that improve high bitdepth encoding by an average of ~5% in low resolutions

Some nice improvements there. There are also some bug fixes and other improvements too. Downloads and more details on SVT-AV1 4.0 via [1]AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1 GitLab . New [2]SVT-AV1 benchmarks soon.



[1] https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/releases

[2] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/svt-av1#results