[this is my first lemmy post, so bear with me please…]

I have encoded the same 720p video (from DVD) with:

• x265 10bits and RF21 preset=slow profile=main10
• AV1 SVT 10 bits and RF21 preset=5

The resulting AV1 file is 10% larger but that should be expected, as according to handbrake documentation, RF21 means significantly higher quality for AV1 than for x265 (AV1@RF30 would be roughly the equivalent of x265@RF21 at 720p)

AV1 file is has less visible compression artifacts but it looses significant details it seems. The screen capture above is with AV1 (I can’t manage to add two pictures somehow). I see more details on the x265 file, more hairs to be exact. It’s like AV1 painted details away.

Of course I prefer details to be painted away rather than blocky artefacts but here it just performs objectively worse than x265.

I wonder what I could have done wrong to have such a high discrepancy compared to expected result (it should have been significantly better than x265).