Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1u3rdpj/depressing_reality_of_choosing_best_codec_to/

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The original was posted on /r/datahoarder by /u/RUNdotUMX on 2026-06-12 10:22:21+00:00.

AVC1, AV1, etc. The more I tested, the more inconclusive the results became. After years of trying to determine "best" codecs to archive via yt-dlp across a wide range of websites, I can only conclude that there is no "best" per website. There is no "best" per given framerate and res combo. There is no "best" per channel. To get the best possible encode for each video, one would have to run a comparison for Every. Individual. Video.

Yes, there are some relatively reliable rules of thumb, such as VP9 tending to look worse than AVC1 and AV1 on YouTube (with caveats like 'Premium' high bitrate VP9 encodes), but when it comes to the ~two top contenders there is never a consistent winner.

I just spent hours comparing AVC1 and AV1 on a popular website, and even though this website, unlike YouTube, was using a high bitrate implementation of AV1 (the file sizes were almost the same as AVC1), it was a complete crapshoot which one was going to look better. And sometimes the differences weren't subtle either. Sometimes the AV1 encodes lost massive amounts of detail vs AVC1 and sometimes it was completely flipped. I was comparing not only static frames, but motion (which is extremely tedious and painstaking work).

It's just so damned variable that it makes me want to download all the formats so that I have the option to choose the best one later. But I can't. I've already angered the throttle gods, not to mention pushing the limits of what is affordable storage space in this era of AI-inflicted scarcity.