Hi guys, I've desided to make a comparison of x264, rav1e and x265 encoders with 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000 kbit/s with the following settings:
rav1e -b $g --tiles 6 -s 5 --matrix BT470BG /D/sintel/sintel720.y4m --output sintel720_rav1e_s5_$g.ivf
rav1e -b $g --tiles 6 -s 3 --matrix BT470BG /D/sintel/sintel720.y4m --output sintel720_rav1e_s5_$g.ivf
x264 -t 2 -m 11 --me umh --weightp 2 --direct spatial --aq-mode 2 --b-adapt 2 -B $g -b 4 -r 6 -I 240 --b-pyramid normal --no-dct-decimate --no-fast-pskip -A all -o sintel720_x264_$g.264
x265 /D/sintel/sintel720.y4m --y4m -o "Sintel720_x265_$g.h265" --rd 3 -b 4 --b-adapt 2 --b-pyramid --ref 6 -I 240 --bitrate $g --aq-mode 2 --weightp --weightb -m 2 --no-early-skip --psy-rd 1 --me star
where $g stands for bitrate value
My OS is Arch Linux x86_64 and CPU Core i5 8600K, rav1e was build recently and for testing 1191 frames of sintel 1k 16bit (from 12987 to 14177) were taken and converted to 720x306 yuv420p. x265 and x264 are from the distro's repository.
To measure MS-SSIM and PSNR-HVS-M daala's tools were used. To measure VMAF score I used ffmpeg's VMAF filter.
Results:
x265 is a clear winner with 50.59-61.01 fps (lowest to highest bitrate settings)
x264 80.08-102.73 fps
rav1e s3 1.603-2.187 fps
rav1e s5 3.736-4.469 fps
Average CPU utilization of rav1e was 66%-70% (and I couldn't increase it).