Using Single-Pass Look-Ahead in Modern Codecs for Optimized Transcoding Deployment

Modern video encoders have evolved into sophisticated pieces of software in which various coding tools interact. In the past, single-pass encoding was not considered for video-on-demand (VOD) use cases. In this work, we evaluate production-ready encoders for H.264 (x264), HEVC (x265), AV1(SVT-AV1) along with direct comparisons to the latest AV1 encoder inside NVIDIA GPUs (40 series), and AWS Mediaconvert's AV1 implementation. Our experimental results demonstrate that single-pass encoding inside modern encoder implementations can give us excellent quality at a reasonable compute cost. The results are presented as three scenarios targeting high, medium, and low complexity accounting quality-bitrate-compute load. Finally, a set of recommendations is presented for end-users to help decide which encoder/preset combination might be more suited to their use case.