HandBrake 1.6.0 Debuts AV1 Transcoding Support for the Masses
And its AV1 encoding can be hardware accelerated with Intel Quick Sync Video or Arc GPU hardware.
HandBrake, the popular free and open source video transcoder, has been updated to version 1.6.0. This major point upgrade is notable for facilitating AV1 video encoding for the first time in a general release. Moreover, those with Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) enabled processors, and those with Intel Arc GPUs will be able to encode AV1 video with hardware acceleration.
HandBrake 1.6.0 can encode AV1 videos on any of its supported systems. In the current release its SVT-AV1 encoder offers the widest support, encoding on your processor through software. However, those with Intel QSV supporting CPUs or discrete Arc graphics can use the QSV-AV1 encoder for hardware accelerated processing. QSV isn't supported if your CPU is an ‘F’ suffixed model (i.e. it doesn't have an iGPU), or it is older than the Skylake generation. If you are lucky enough to have multiple QSV accelerators in your system, support for Intel Deep Link Hyper Encode should accelerate processing further. While AMD and Nvidia have AV1 encoders available for their latest GPUs, they currently aren’t integrated with HandBrake.
AV1 video is set to become the dominant codec across app-based streaming services and the wider internet, offering attractions such as; an open and royalty-free architecture, improved compression enabling efficient 8K video streaming, and support for the newest HDR standards. Developed by the Alliance for Open Media, the AV1 standard is expected to usurp the likes of H.264/AVC and HEVC, and it looks like a sure-fire winner with the support of tech giants like Amazon, Apple, ARM, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, and Samsung.
Alongside the new AV1 transcoding support, the HandBrake developers have put together several 10-bit encoder profiles, and a handful of presets for dealing with typical AV1 encoding tasks. For those still interested in H.264 and H.265 encoding there are new profiles too. Meanwhile, a multitude of the app’s built in filters are updated in v1.6.0, with many of the updates implemented to support >8-bit color depths. The latest release notes on GitHub details all the above changes, as well as the updated libraries, and tweaks such as bug fixes on various platforms.
If you are interested in grabbing the latest HandBrake release to dabble in AV1 encoding, earlier versions of the transcoding utility are currently not seeing the update as available. Instead of waiting, you can head on over to the official downloads page and download and install or upgrade your existing version. HandBrake is available for Windows 10 or later, MacOS, and Linux.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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tamalero Any reason why there hasn't been support from Nvidia and AMD?Reply
I noticed that AV1 is also locked down on pro tools like the paid version of DaVinci Resolve -
baboma Any reason why there hasn't been support from Nvidia and AMD?
AV1 encoding support is only supported in the latest Intel Arc Graphics, AMD RX 7000 series, and NVIDIA RTX 4000 series.
I'm surprised that Intel QuickSync has any AV1 enc support, as that won't come until Meteor Lake. Reading up on how that's possible. It may accelerate my plans for AV1 migration. -
AndrewJacksonZA Yaaaay! Now I don't have to struggle with the nightly releases of Handbrake anymore with my A750 to encode AV1! :-) My i7-6700 gets between 0.5 - 1.5FPS doing an AV1 encode. With the A750 I'm getting up to 390-ish FPS and the quality and file size is brilliant.Reply
(BTW - AV1 REALLY kicks the llama's ass in terms of quality and file size: with my stuff it's smaller than H256 with the same or better quality. Also, while converting my DVD collection into files for the family to access from whichever computer, I'm learning a lot about how capable MK4 files are as containers. :- ) -
AndrewJacksonZA
Lol, yeah, I can imagine so! I wouldn't want to do that either. Fortunately I don't have a big library already ripped to start with.Mandark said:That’s great but I’m not going to rerip my library lol -
TheOtherOne StaxRip > Handbrake. Admittedly, it's not even fair competition since StaxRip is in a different league!Reply -
baboma TheOtherOne said:StaxRip > Handbrake. Admittedly, it's not even fair competition since StaxRip is in a different league!
StaxRip may have ceased development,
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=172068&page=231
People on Doom9 are talking about Hybrid as a replacement. But the dev doesn't yet have an AV1-capable HW encoder,
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=153035
I'm just passing this on, as I don't use either (or HB). I use a combo of AviSynth + shell script + standalone tools. -
TheOtherOne
Thanks for this and bummer! I just thought there wasn't much changing recently for the lack of any major updates and StaxRip works just fine with x265 encoding. I remember checking out Hybrid briefly long ago and will look into it again if StaxRip is truly done for good.baboma said:StaxRip may have ceased development,
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=172068&page=231
People on Doom9 are talking about Hybrid as a replacement. But the dev doesn't yet have an AV1-capable HW encoder,
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=153035
I'm just passing this on, as I don't use either (or HB). I use a combo of AviSynth + shell script + standalone tools. -
USAFRet
Why would you need to?Mandark said:That’s great but I’m not going to rerip my library lol
They were acceptable quality 2 days ago, presumably they are acceptable now. -
Ar558 Anyone get the QSV hardware AV1 encoding to work? I have a 12700K and it says "Not Available"?Reply