Auto-Boost-Essential
Auto-Boost-Essential is the latest iteration of the Auto-Boost formula, streamlined and refined for greater convenience, speeds and boosting gains!
This encoding script is intended to be paired with my SVT-AV1-Essential encoder fork.
SVT-AV1-Essential sports excellent quality consistency, but Auto-Boost-Essential offers exceptional consistency!
Here is how it works: the script runs a first encoder fass-pass, finds scenes based on the introduced keyframes, calculate metrics scores, automatically adjusts the CRF of scenes in order to increase quality consistency and then runs a final-pass with these adjustements.
The quality metric at play this time again is SSIMULACRA2.
Dependencies
Before using Auto-Boost-Essential, you will need to install the following dependencies:
- SVT-AV1-Essential
- Python 3.12.x or newer
- Vship (AMD/Nvidia GPU) and/or vs-zip (CPU)
- Vapoursynth and vstools (vsjetpack works too!)
- FFMS2
Lost users can refer to this Vapoursynth install guide (up until "Installing the JET Packages"). If you are still lost, join the Discord server linked below and ask for help!
Arch users can run this single command to install everything:
yay -S svt-av1-essential-git vapoursynth-plugin-vsjetpack vapoursynth-plugin-vship-cuda-git vapoursynth-plugin-vszip-git ffms2
Radeon users can simply replace vapoursynth-plugin-vship-cuda-git with vapoursynth-plugin-vship-amd-git .
Usage
Auto-Boost-Essential can be considered a helper script, as all you need to do is provide an input video file and it will manage everything for you:
python Auto-Boost-Essential.py "my_video_file.mp4"
Even though the above command is sufficient to run the script, one may use additional parameters to tweak the experience, for instance:
| Parameter | Usage |
|---|---|
--version |
Print script version |
--verbose |
Enable more verbosity [Default: not active] |
--input |
Video input filepath (original source file) |
--temp |
The temporary directory for the script to store files in [Default: video input filename] |
--no-boosting |
Runs the script without boosting (final encode only) [Default: not active] |
--resume |
Resume the process from the last (un)completed stage [Default: not active] |
--stage |
Select stage: 1 = fast encode, 2 = calculate metrics, 3 = generate zones, 4 = final encode [Default: all] |
--cpu |
Force the usage of vs-zip (CPU) instead of Vship (GPU) [Default: not active] |
--fast-speed |
Fast encode speed (Allowed: medium, fast, faster) [Default: faster] |
--final-speed |
Final encode speed (Allowed: slower, slow, medium, fast, faster) [Default: slow] |
--quality |
Base encoder --quality (Allowed: low, medium, high) [Default: medium] |
--aggressive |
More aggressive boosting [Default: not active] |
--unshackle |
Less restrictive boosting [Default: not active] |
--fast-params |
Custom fast encoding parameters |
--final-params |
Custom final encoding parameters |
Yes, the script is even capable of resuming unfinished encodes like Av1an, and can also be run with boosting disabled if all you care is the convenience of a SVT-AV1-Essential wrapper.
Contribute
The script is open to contributions!
Namely, I'm looking to improve the boosting logic to increase consistency further, with little to no additional performance implications.
Code refactors for clean-up and fixes are also appreciated!
Benchmarks:
| Metrics | Speed |
|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Speed may vary depending on your hardware configuration and source resolution.
The above results are not even best-case scenarios. The selected samples are very complex. More gains are expected on your average clip, granted it contains more than one scene at a minimum!
Join us over at AV1 weeb edition!