--- layout: default category: "OBS" title: "High Quality Recording (in OBS Studio) with AV1" comments: true date: "2023-05-05" redirect_from: - /guides/high-quality-recordings/svt-av1/ - /guides/high-quality-recordings/aom-av1/ ---

The world called for a more efficient royalty-free codec, and AV1 is the answer. It is significantly better than VP9 at the same task, and has a significant reduction in decoding complexity, putting the complexity on the encoding side instead. Given that it is a more recent codec, support for it is still relatively small - though software decoders can handle it just fine on most devices.

# AMD AMF

## Built-In

Option | Lossless | Near Lossless | Indistinguishable | High Quality | Acceptable Quality
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Rate Control | N/A | CQP
CQ Level | 5 - 10 | 11 - 16 | 17 - 22+
Profile | Speed
Max B-frames | Any, but less may be faster
AMF/FFmpeg Options | preanalysis=false filler_data=false skip_frame=false
OBS Color Format | NV12 (SDR), P010 (HDR)

For empty fields, look further left.

### Additional Notes

- AMDs AV1 encoder is only capable of 4:2:0.
- You can freely adjust the Key-Frame Interval for anything but Lossless. Lossless will (and should) always produce an IDR-Frame every frame.

# Intel QSV

## Built-In

Option | Lossless | Near Lossless | Indistinguishable | High Quality | Acceptable Quality
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Rate Control | N/A | CQP
CQQ | 5 - 10 | 11 - 16 | 17 - 22+
Target Usage | veryfast
Profile | high
Keyframe Interval | 1
Latency | normal
OBS Color Format | NV12 (SDR), P010 (HDR)

For empty fields, look further left.

### Additional Notes

- Intel QSV AV1 is only capable of 4:2:0 encoding.
- Intels QSV AV1 encoder is tied to CPU usage, so it may perform worse than x265 would.
- You can freely adjust the Key-Frame Interval for anything but Lossless. Lossless will (and should) always produce an IDR-Frame every frame.

# NVIDIA NVENC

## Built-In

Option | Lossless | Near Lossless | Indistinguishable | High Quality | Acceptable Quality
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Rate Control | N/A | CQP
CQ Level | 5 - 10 | 11 - 16 | 17 - 22+
Preset | P1: Fastest (Lowest Quality)
Tuning | High Quality
Multipass Mode | Single Pass
Profile | main
Look-ahead | Disabled
Psycho Visual Tuning | Disabled
Max B-frames | 0
OBS Color Format | NV12 (SDR), P010 (HDR)

For empty fields, look further left.

### Additional Notes

- NVIDIA NVENC AV1 is only capable of 4:2:0 encoding.
- You can freely adjust the Key-Frame Interval for anything but Lossless. Lossless will (and should) always produce an IDR-Frame every frame.