> Yes, VP9 is basically on par with H.265 at standard resolutions, so if AV1 is 34% better, then it is a lot better than H.265.
Is that really true, though? The most comprehensive test I've seen [1] led Netflix to conclude that H.265 was better than VP9 by about 20%, including resolutions all the way down to 360p. In my own experience and other tests I've seen the gap seems even wider. There's a few usecases where VP9 is superior (most notably screencasts), but generally it seems to lag behind H.265 while also being much slower to encode.
Sigh. Just reading some of these comments here, and even some in Doom9, turns out we haven't learn much over the past nearly 20 years?
Doom9 was started 18 years ago, and many of these has since been discussed many many times.
And yet people still look at PSNR and SSIM as gold standard. And many here start to present them as "FACTS", even when they have been told not to repeatedly. Even when we have present them with all the information of why. And this is even happening on HN. May be we dont have a problem of fake news at all, we have a problem with people not willing to learn and understand, and decide to believe what ever their narrative best. This isn't just royalty free ( Not patents Free ) AV1 codec, but also programming languages, etc Sorry I am going a little off topic.
I really like you stating patents not an issues, so we throw away one question that does not have a right or wrong answer.
To answer your question, if your encoded copy is only viewed by you, then yes you will be the judge whether it is of similar quality, not PSNR or SSIM or even VMAF. We haven't have enough time to fully test out and evolve the VMAF metrics, but so far it is at least a much better metrics then PSNR and SSIM that is being used in EVERY AV1 test that begs about it being superior.
Depending on who you ask, but anyone who hate patents or on the AV1 camp will tell you their VP9 is already better then x265, as a matter of facts they have been stating this since day one before VP9 were any good. But as you pointed out using VMAF metrics x265 is better then VP9, and VP9 has been tuned for PSNR, and SSIM values, which is part of the VMAF calculation. This gives a slight disadvantage to x264 or x265, both dont give a damn about PSNR since its inception.
I do admit AV1 will likely be better then x265 in encode, given the immense complexity involved. But so far i think it is marginal to slightly better, the 30% better doesn't mean you can get a 1.4Mbps AV1 Encode to look similar to 2Mbps x265, at least in my view. You can test this yourself, but that is assuming you have enough time and spare resources to play around with the AV1 insanely slow encoder.
I guess it depends on content and your infrastructure. Whenever I put anywhere near similar encoding time and bitrate into a VP9 stream and an H.265 stream, I tend to get very similar results with both.
Is that really true, though? The most comprehensive test I've seen [1] led Netflix to conclude that H.265 was better than VP9 by about 20%, including resolutions all the way down to 360p. In my own experience and other tests I've seen the gap seems even wider. There's a few usecases where VP9 is superior (most notably screencasts), but generally it seems to lag behind H.265 while also being much slower to encode.
[1] http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar...