# SVT-AV1 presets compared

Canonical: https://rendobar.com/blog/svt-av1-presets-measured/
Author: Abdelrahman Essawy
Published: 2026-08-20
Updated: 2026-08-20

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## Key takeaways

- Preset 12 was both FASTER and SMALLER than preset 10: 614 ms against 653 ms, and 219.7 KB against 229.7 KB. Preset 10 is strictly dominated.
- Preset 4 to preset 12 is a 3.91x speed difference for 25.8% more bytes, so the dial is real but the ends are not far apart in size.
- SVT-AV1 timings were reproducible to within 1.3 to 3.4% across three runs, unlike libx264 on auto threading which swung 85%.
- Preset 8 is the sensible default: 2.2x faster than preset 4 for 28% more bytes, and it is what most AV1 pipelines should start from.
- The size curve is non-monotonic, exactly as it is for x264 presets. Slower does not reliably mean smaller in constant-quality mode.

SVT-AV1's preset dial runs from 0 to 13 and the guidance is usually "lower is
better, pick what you can afford". One rung of it turns out to be worth nothing
at all.

Short version. **Preset 12 was faster AND smaller than preset 10.** If you are
on 10, moving to 12 costs you nothing and gains you both.

## Preset 10 is dominated

| Preset | Median | Size |
|---|---:|---:|
| 4 | 2,399 ms | 174.6 KB |
| 6 | 1,585 ms | 197.3 KB |
| 8 | 1,105 ms | 224.4 KB |
| 10 | 653 ms | **229.7 KB** |
| 12 | **614 ms** | **219.7 KB** |

Preset 12 finished **39 ms sooner** and produced a file **10 KB smaller**. There
is no axis on which preset 10 wins, which makes it a rung with no reason to
exist for this content.

This is the same non-monotonicity we found in
[FFmpeg x264 presets compared](/blog/x264-presets-measured/), and it has the same
cause. `-crf` targets constant quality, not constant size. A preset that searches
harder can find detail worth spending bits on, so output size at fixed quality is
an emergent property rather than a dial you are turning.

The lesson generalises past AV1: **if you are choosing an encoder preset by
output size, measure it. Do not assume the ordering.**

## The dial is real, and shorter than advertised

Preset 4 to preset 12 is **3.91x** in time and **25.8%** in size.

That 3.91x is worth having. What is more surprising is the size column: the
slowest setting measured bought only about a quarter fewer bytes than the
fastest. AV1's reputation is that the slow presets are transformative, and on
this clip the whole usable range is 174.6 KB to 229.7 KB.

For most pipelines that makes **preset 8 the sensible default**. It is 2.2x
faster than preset 4 for 28% more bytes, and it was also the setting that beat
VP9 outright in [AV1 vs VP9 vs HEVC vs H.264](/blog/av1-vp9-hevc-h264-measured/).

Go slower than 8 when you encode once and serve many times, and the 25% matters
more than the four seconds. Go faster when you are transcoding a library that is
mostly never watched.

## These timings are trustworthy, and that is not a given

Three runs per preset, and the spreads were **1.3% to 3.4%**.

That is worth flagging because it is unusual on this infrastructure. The same
libx264 command on default threading varied by **85%** across five runs, which
was enough to
[retract a claim we had already published](/blog/measurement-noise-ffmpeg-benchmarks/).

SVT-AV1 does not behave that way. It manages its own thread pool and pins its own
work, so it does the same amount of computation regardless of what else the
machine is doing. The result is a benchmark you can read at single-digit
percentage resolution without pinning anything yourself.

Sizes were byte-identical across all three runs of every preset, as they are
everywhere on this site.

## Where this stops

One 5-second 1280x720 clip, `libsvtav1 -crf 35`, audio stripped, three runs per
preset. Presets 0 to 3 were not measured: they are slow enough that the sweep
would have dominated the cost of every other benchmark here, and almost nobody
runs them outside archival work.

Content matters for the non-monotonicity specifically. The preset 10 versus 12
inversion is a property of what those search strategies found in this footage,
and it may not reproduce on yours. The 3.91x speed range and the rough size
envelope should travel.

AV1 is one of several codecs measured on this source. The comparison against H.264, HEVC and VP9 is in [Video codec comparison, measured](/blog/video-codec-comparison/).