Aviator Changelog

What's new in Aviator 0.6.0

Mar 13, 2024
  • Exciting SVT-AV1-PSY improvements and an awesome audio fix that's been a long time coming!
  • First, Aviator changes:
  • Migrated to libadwaita 1.4+ widgets
  • Fixed the notorious 5.1(side) audio encoding error
  • Minor code clean-up
  • SVT-AV1-PSY (v2.0.0rc2) updates relevant to Aviator:
  • Updated variance boost to improve encoding efficiency and eliminate rare flickering artifacts
  • Variance boost refactored to work with native q-step ratios
  • Preset -1 is twice as fast, & presets 0 through 8 are up to 28% faster
  • Presets 9 through 12 are 1-4% more efficient
  • Additional ARM optimizations
  • Bug fixes

New in Aviator 0.5.1 (Feb 7, 2024)

  • TL;DR, mostly SVT-AV1-PSY improvements. But still exciting, nonetheless!
  • Open GOP toggle has been renamed to oGOP
  • Speed -1 and -2 are now supported with a warning when you go below Speed 3. Speed -2 can take over 8 hours for a minute of video on a Ryzen 9
  • New "Perceptual Tuning" enables some new SVT-AV1-PSY features by default to improve visual fidelity at the cost of metric scores
  • "-mapping_family 1" is now enabled in libopus, so surround encodes will benefit from Opus's multichannel optimizations
  • Modified SVT-AV1 defaults, notably re-enabling temporal filtering by default

New in Aviator 0.5.0 (Jan 15, 2024)

  • Today, we have a very exciting development - Aviator has switched to an in-house custom fork of SVT-AV1 dubbed SVT-AV1-PSY!
  • Featuring development efforts from BlueSwordM (author of the previous custom fork), myself (Gianni), and others, this change will enable us to have much more control over the encoder's development so that it aligns most effectively with Aviator's number one priority: visual quality.
  • So far, SVT-AV1-PSY's most noteworthy feature is a variance boost patch that appreciably improves intra- and inter-frame fidelity consistency across wide range of content. Visual fidelity per bit is estimated to have increased by up to 5% with this patch, which currently isn't present in mainline SVT-AV1.
  • Even though this patch should inevitably make it to mainline, the gains from having more direct control are already being realized as we can implement features like this flexibly at a pace we decide.
  • Aside from that, FFmpeg has been updated to version 6.1, the SCM toggle has been replaced with a more useful Open GOP toggle, and the README has been modified to reflect some of these more recent changes with regard to SVT-AV1-PSY.
  • Thank you for using Aviator, and happy encoding!

New in Aviator 0.4.3 (Dec 15, 2023)

  • TL;DR, Aviator is much faster! Specifically, around 17-53% faster for presets 0 through 6 and 1-4% better quality for presets 7+
  • Updated SVT-AV1 to a custom fork by BlueSwordM featuring changes from 1.8.0, including speed-ups for presets 1 through 6 that improve encoding speed by 17-53%. This fork features an adaptive quantization curve that boosts deltaq based on variance within superblocks. This is not available in mainline SVT-AV1
  • SVT-AV1 now features NEON optimization, making encoding up to a whopping 8 times faster than before on ARM-based platforms
  • Updated to GNOME 45 runtime
  • Minor changes in the codebase that should make it easier to add an Open GOP toggle in the future (currently breaks keyframe placement)

New in Aviator 0.4.2 (Sep 13, 2023)

  • Updated SVT-AV1 to 1.7.0, which features rebalanced presets & more massive speed improvements
  • In light of SVT-AV1's speedy development, Preset 7 is now high enough quality to be featured as Aviator's default speed preset
  • "Copy Audio" now disables other audio options in the GUI
  • New "Adaptive SCM" toggle (explained in tooltip)
  • Small fixes & adjustments

New in Aviator 0.4.1 (Jul 12, 2023)

  • Updated SVT-AV1 fork promises up to a 40% speed improvement for higher quality presets (p5 & lower)
  • New "Crop" option for switching between cropping & scaling resolution
  • Updated SVT-AV1 parameters for an 0.3-0.8% perceptual quality improvement

New in Aviator 0.4.0 (May 27, 2023)

  • Custom, perceptually optimized fork of SVT-AV1 featuring a bleeding edge tune that outperforms the latest release in visual quality per bit.
  • New audio filters, Volume & Normalization, available through a slider & a toggle respectively on the Audio page.
  • Prettier SVT-AV1 parameter handling in the codebase.

New in Aviator 0.3.0 (May 17, 2023)

  • New "Copy Audio" switch that allows passing the audio through without reencoding (disables WebM output).
  • Improved resolution scaling with automatic width/height adjustment based on one resolution input value & a less aggressive default scaling algorithm (Catmull-Rom).
  • Removed "Match Source" buttons - resolution will match source if left empty, & audio won't be reencoded at an identical bitrate (this is not smart to do).
  • Removed Opus VBR switch.
  • Denoise toggle for film grain denoise pass.
  • Credited Trix for their help with rAV1ator that has transferred to Aviator. Thanks, Trix!

New in Aviator 0.2.2 (May 4, 2023)

  • Updated to FFmpeg 6.0
  • Updated to SVT-AV1 1.5.0

New in Aviator 0.2.1a (Apr 23, 2023)

  • Fix: subtitle & audio mapping. If your encodes were not moving past 0%, this should fix it.

New in Aviator 0.1.2 (Nov 10, 2022)

  • Fix: typos