Quality vs speed – AV1 3,000 times slower than HEVC, claims report

Rivals of the AV1 video codec finally have something to cheer about, after a study found that AV1 was between 2,500 and 3,000 times slower than its competitors. HEVC supporters won’t be shouting the news from the rooftops just yet, however, as the trial states the AV1 encoder was not optimized and we suspect running an outdated version – meaning more processing cycles are required to paint an accurate picture of AV1’s potential. Moscow State University recently conducted an updated codec comparison introducing high-quality encoders including AV1 and VP9, unsurprisingly finding that AV1 produced superior quality over its predecessor VP9 and main competitor HEVC. Yet research concluded that the AV1 encoder produced the lowest speed of all 12 encoders tested,…