“AV1 encoder is better than AMD and Intel”

OBS Studio is the most popular software among professional live broadcasters on Youtube, Twitch and other sites. It’s a powerful tool for mixing audio and video from different sources, adding effects, text, and more, and broadcasting the result live. Version 29.1 of the software has just been released, adding support for streaming in AV1 format to Youtube. AV1, like HEVC, is a format that provides higher quality at the same bit rate than H.264.

nvidia Commensurate with the launch of the hardware acceleration drive of AV1 encoding in the company’s graphics cards in the Geforce RTX 4000 series, the eighth generation of NVENC. According to Nvidia, NVENC provides up to twice the effective compression as H.264 at 4K – about 10Mbps instead of 20Mbps, at 60fps.

The company is also making a comparison with competing AMD and Intel AV1 encoders, claiming that NVENC retains more detail in an image than those at the same settings, or can provide the same image quality at a lower bit rate.

NOTE Studio 29.1 also supports HEVC encoding for streaming to Youtube, which may be of particular interest to Mac users, as Apple’s M1 and M2 chips have HEVC hardware encoding but not AV1.