1080p60 with AMV2 and AMV4 codecs

Before I get started, this will probably be my last post of the year so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I got a message from a reader asking to test AMV2 and AMV4 with 1080p60, so here goes. To get a fair comparison with my other 1080p60 battle article, I'll only test the lossless modes.

I'll talk about AMV2 first. Here's the basic configuration you would use for YUY2 Lossless capture.

R1: Speed is just a total nightmare. I managed to screenshot one of the data rates that popped up. Click to enlarge all pictures.

With a single drive and even with a 512 buffer size, these data rates are too much. The preview window will become very laggy and inserted frames begin. The R2: Standard mode is no different. 20 seconds in and we are already dropping frames. Luckily we never come close to any data rates of R1.

Knowing this there is no point in trying Y1 and we will just move straight to Y2: Standard.

Leave it capturing for about 30 seconds and the same issues will occur.

AMV2 Conclusion: It's just simply old and was never meant to handle such resolutions. Perfectly fine for SD and probably 720p.

Now let's talk about AMV4. It was released earlier this year so it should have been designed to handle such resolutions.

Let's go for DY2:Standard.

CPU usage is pretty much exactly the same as MagicYuv, but the data rates are slightly more (what I show is one of the peaks). However, absolutely no dropped frames and stable preview window.

Now let's look at DY3:High compress.

CPU usage doubles but the bit rate on average lowers by about 20%. Is that a good trade off? Yes. Definitely my preferred mode. However, it's now just a worse MagicYuv.

AMV4 Conclusion: A much preferred alternative to AMV2 but it's still just worse than MagicYuv and nowhere near x264vfw. These codecs also require you to pay to remove a watermark on the videos.

That's not really the issues though. The main people who read my blog are speedrunners and these codecs are not viable since the source is closed and will never be implemented into FFmpeg. This means the videos will not work when you import them into SDA submission programs like Yua. For now I'd still stick to x264vfw.