Media Encoding — AV1

Nowadays, all video that is consumed, whether on TV, physical media, or streamed over the internet, is compressed using various codecs. AV1 is a next-generation video codec that is open and royalty-free, unlike other recent new video compression algorithms. Major industry players like YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook stand behind AV1 and are gradually rolling out support for the new format. Compared to older algorithms, like H.264, the compression rate is much better, or you can achieve better image quality for a given bitrate. We use the SVT-AV1 encoder with a 4K video source to compress to AV1.

Media Encoding — H.265 / HEVC

Our second video-encoding test uses the H.265 codec, which is also known as HEVC. We compress a 4K video using the latest version of the X265 encoder with 8-bit color depth, preset "slow," and a quality setting of crf 20.

Media Encoding — H.264 / AVC

H.264, also called AVC, is a slightly older compression format, though probably the most widely used these days because it is well supported in even older hardware. We compress the same video as in the H.265 test using the X264 encoding software, with the preset "slower" and crf 20.

Media Encoding — MP3

MP3 revolutionized the music industry like no other technology. Introduced in the 90s, it enabled massive reduction in audio-file sizes without noticeable impact on sound quality. This made music downloads, and ultimately streaming, a feasible method of content delivery over the Internet. For our benchmark, we convert a 2.5 hour-long 44.1 kHz Stereo recording to a variable bitrate MP3 file. MP3 encoding is a single-threaded process.