Please report any problems, still tuning the settings

I know this is more of an encoding test than a release, but you might as well mux in fonts EDIT: Do you have the equivalent of x264's "--keyint infinite" set? It's pretty important to have some sort of keyframe limit. If you try to jump to the end of the ED in episode 12, you're forced to render >3600 frames. That's a hard ask, given the codec. In episode 12, I noticed distracting flashing banding during some bits of the car scene (e.g. 7:38). How much of that is the source, and how much is your encode?

I was surprised how much banding the source had, checked other versions (Japanese, German) all of them had the same issue. However in AV1 encounters a lot of problems with dark scenes and banding. I tried to mitigate this by adding synthetic grain (AV1 can emulate grain to save a lot of bits) however playback on mobile devices was reduced to zero. Keyframes are far in between but that was the default setting in the encoder, next time I'll try to increase it. Also I will probably use minimum bitrate settings because in some places it tries to save where it shouldn't.

if AV1 is bad with dark scenes and banding, not only does it sound pretty useless for anime, you also managed to pick one of the worst anime to test it on.

I mean, you have to test the platform's limits, right?

Not AV1 itself but the encoders. I need to stress test them and figure out what works and what doesn't. Also 10bit solves all the issues but decoders aren't there yet.

How does this compare to HEVC in terms of saving? I wonder if it's really the replacement of HEVC.

@JhonnySetnom HEVC is mostly a continuation of the ideas behind AVC while AV1 is an amalgamation of technologies developed by Google, Cisco, and Xiph/Mozilla (not unlike what Opus is for audio). They are at a comparable level right now, but HEVC can be considered mature at this point while AV1 is still at a very early point in its development, so it is expected that it will be able to consistently outperform HEVC in foreseeable future. The fact that it's royalty-free by design and also backed up by some of IT industry's biggest companies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Open_Media#Governing_members) should also accelerate its adoption; the first smartphone SoC with hardware AV1 support was announced just a few days ago, for instance.

@Montec I'm not sure if you really look at these older encode's comments, but have you thought about reencoding this series? Encoders are a looot better than they were when this was released, so I think this series especially, with all the dark scenes and stuff, would greatly benefit from a reencode

In E02 the image freezes between 7:42 and 7:55, I tried with the lasted version of vlc and mpv and both did the same, I'm not sure if it's just me but I though I'd let you know.