SVT-AV1 V3.0 is Now Available
The AOMedia Software Implementation Working Group (SIWG) is excited to share SVT-AV1 V3.0, a major release that represents an important improvement in performance and includes a few key bug fixes. Scalable Video Technology (SVT) refers to the ability of an encoder to scale its performance according to the compute capabilities of the platform on which it is running, essentially allowing it to use the maximum amount of allocated resources to achieve the highest possible video quality. SVT-AV1 is an open-source, CPU-based AV1 encoder. It is an AOMedia project that provides an AV1-compliant open-source encoder library.
Why is this update important?
The latest release of SVT-AV1 delivers significant performance improvements along with a major API update, including:
- A clean-up of unused fields, use stdbool type, and redundant parameters in svt_av1_enc_init_handle
- Repositioning the presets and removing one preset resulting in a max preset of M10 in the current version
- Addition of a temporal layer and averageQP fields in output picture structure, along with an option to specify a QP offset for the startup GOP
The API changes are not backwards compatible. More details about the changes can be found in issue 2217.
The release also featured some key encoder updates, including:
- Improved mid- and high-quality presets and quality vs. speed tradeoffs for
fast-decode 2 mode:
- ~15-25% speedup for M3-M10 at the same quality levels
- ~1% BD-rate improvement for presets M0-M2
- Repositioning of the fast-decode 1 mode to produce ~10% decoder cycle reduction vs fast-decode 0 while reducing the BD-rate loss to ~1%
- Further Arm Neon and SVE2 optimizations that improve high bit-depth encoding by an average of 10-25% for 480p-1080p resolutions beyond the architecture-agnostic algorithmic improvements since v2.3.0
- Porting of several features from SVT-AV1-SPY fork to further improve the perceptual quality of tune 0 mode
- Added lossless coding support and an avif mode to reduce resource utilization when encoding still images
Finally, SVT-AV1 also released two follow-up minor releases v3.0.1 and v3.0.2 that includes a cleanup build, bug fixes and documentation, specifically:
- Removal of the third party cpuinfo code in favor of using one provided by the system. (For those without cpuinfo, it will be pulled and compiled into the library, similar to before)
- Improved unit test coverage for Arm Neon and SVE2 code
- Updated documentation
Where can you find it?
The latest SVT-AV1 release can be found on GitLab. Please take a moment to give it a try and report feedback. Your input helps drive the continued improvements that benefit us all.
Thank you to all the members of the Software Implementation Working Group and the vibrant open source community for their ongoing contributions. Your hard work makes these updates possible.