ivenos/avet repository overview

Note: This description is automatically generated from the GitHub repository README⁠.

⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠

avet is an AV1 encoding service that watches a folder, splits each video at its scene cuts and encodes the chunks in parallel with SVT-AV1. It writes a finished MKV with audio, subtitles and chapters carried over, and ships as a Docker image and as a Linux AppImage with every tool bundled.

⁠Features

• SVT-AV1⁠ or SVT-AV1-HDR⁠ per profile
• Resumes from the last finished chunk after a restart
• Target quality: a CRF per chunk from a CVVDP⁠ score, with optional CAMBI⁠ banding limits (GPU required)
• HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision profiles 7 and 8
• Automatic crop, downscale and keyframe interval
• Per-track audio and subtitle rules with language filters

⁠Installation

⁠Docker

services:
  avet:
    image: ivenos/avet:latest
    user: "1000:1000"
    volumes:
      - ./input:/input
      - ./output:/output
    restart: unless-stopped

Create input/ and output/ before the first start, otherwise Docker creates them owned by root. Without user: the container runs as root and its files on the host belong to root. On a host with SELinux, such as Fedora or openSUSE, add security_opt: [label=disable] so the container can read the folders.

[target_quality] needs a GPU, nothing else does:

• Intel or AMD: add devices: ["/dev/dri:/dev/dri"] and group_add with the numeric ID of the host's render group (getent group render).
• NVIDIA: use the AppImage. The image is built on musl, where NVIDIA's Vulkan driver does not load.

The arm64 image has no hardware Vulkan driver.

⁠AppImage

Download the AppImage for your architecture from the latest release⁠, make it executable with chmod +x and run it. It watches input/ and output/ in the working directory. It needs glibc 2.39 or newer and FUSE; without FUSE, run it with --appimage-extract-and-run.

⁠Usage

Every subfolder of the input directory is a profile: one encode.toml and the videos it applies to.

input/
├── movies/
│   ├── encode.toml
│   └── The Movie (2021).mkv
├── anime/
│   ├── encode.toml
│   └── The Show/
│       └── Season 1/
│           └── Episode 01.mkv
└── processed/               # sources move here once encoded

output/
├── The Movie (2021).mkv
└── The Show/
    └── Season 1/
        └── Episode 01.mkv

• Supported extensions: mkv, mp4, mov, avi, ts, m2ts, flv, webm, m4v. Only the first video track is encoded.
• Video is encoded as 4:2:0 at 8 or 10 bits. An odd frame size loses its last column or row. Interlaced video is deinterlaced with bwdif at its frame rate, when the stream is flagged interlaced and ffmpeg's idet finds its frames combed. Aspect ratio, rotation, the color description, HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ metadata and the offsets between streams are kept.
• A file whose output already exists is skipped. A file that is still being copied in is picked up once it stops growing. A source that could not be archived after its encode is archived on a later scan.
• Folders inside a profile are kept in output/ and processed/. Once a folder's last video is encoded, the empty source folder is removed.
• Output files keep the source's name with .mkv, so queued files that would end up at the same output path, such as film.mkv and film.mp4, wait until one is renamed.
• Work in progress lives in .avet_<name>/ next to the output file. Delete that folder to encode a file from scratch.
• A failure that can clear on its own, such as an encode.toml avet cannot read or rejects, a timeout or a full disk, is retried: on the next scan, then at doubling intervals of up to 60 scans, and at once after a change of encode.toml. Any other failure, such as an option the encoder refuses, writes a .failed file into that folder, and the video is skipped until you delete it or change encode.toml.
• A file during which avet dies or one of its tools is killed three times in a row, as a crash in FFMS2 or the out-of-memory killer would cause, gets a .failed file as well. A stop by signal does not count.
• On SIGTERM, SIGINT or SIGHUP avet exits after the current file, on a second signal at once. A file stopped mid-encode, e.g. by Ctrl-C in a terminal or by docker stop after its timeout, resumes from its last finished chunk.
• A second avet on the same output folder waits until the first one stops. It checks the .avet.lock file there.
• The avet started log line names the version, and avet --version prints it.

⁠Environment variables

⁠Configuration

Only encoder is required. Unknown keys are rejected.

encoder = "svt-av1"

[encoder_params]
preset = 6
crf    = 28

[avet]
crop      = true
keyint    = true
scale     = 1080
bit_depth = 10

[audio]
language_whitelist = ["eng"]
mode    = "encode"
codec   = "libopus"
bitrate = { stereo = "192k", "5.1" = "320k", "7.1" = "512k", default = "192k" }

[audio.lossless]
codec   = "flac"
options = { compression_level = 12 }

[subtitles]
language_whitelist = ["eng", "jpn"]

⁠encoder

svt-av1 or svt-av1-hdr. Not needed with avet.video = "copy".

⁠[encoder_params]

Passed to the encoder as --key value; booleans become 1/0. avet reads two of them itself: it encodes one chunk per lp CPU cores at once (6 when unset) as far as free RAM allows, and crf is the first probe when [target_quality] is set. color-primaries, transfer-characteristics, matrix-coefficients, color-range and chroma-sample-position take their numeric code, e.g. 9 for BT.2020. [target_quality] cannot be combined with tbr, cqp, an rc other than 0, color-primaries, transfer-characteristics, matrix-coefficients or color-range.

⁠[target_quality]

Replaces the fixed crf: avet probes each chunk at a few CRF values and encodes at the highest one that still holds jod. CVVDP scores in JOD from 0 to 10, where 10 means no visible difference from the source.

[target_quality]
jod = 9.5

• Needs avet.video = "encode" and cannot be combined with avet.scale.
• max_encoded_percent wins over jod: a chunk that would grow past it gets a higher CRF, and a warning is logged. The sizes are those of the probes; a finished chunk that still comes out larger is logged too. Where the source's packet sizes cannot be read, the limit is off for that file.
• CAMBI is 0 without banding; Netflix places slightly annoying banding at around 5. max_cambi counts banding the source already has, max_cambi_diff does not. Both are compared with the 95th percentile of a chunk's frames and are measured without film grain.
• A finished chunk is scored again. The done line gives the lowest of these scores, and a chunk that came out under jod although its probe held it is logged as a warning.
• If no probe holds every limit, the chunk uses the lowest probed CRF under max_encoded_percent, or the smallest probe if none is under it.

⁠[avet]

⁠[audio]

• The whitelist matches both spellings (deu and ger). Tracks without a language or tagged und are always kept.
• Language tags keep their region and script, such as pt-BR or zh-Hant.
• Re-encoded tracks get the codec added to their title, e.g. English 5.1 (Opus).
• Copied tracks Matroska has no codec ID for, such as Blu-ray LPCM, are stored as PCM. Copied LATM AAC, as DVB-T2 sends it, is stored as plain AAC. A track ffmpeg can neither copy into Matroska nor decode, such as AC-4, is left out with a warning.
• A track that changes its channel layout midway, such as DVB audio with a stereo lead-in, is encoded in its widest layout.
• Opus gets every channel of a layout it has no mapping for by using the next larger one, e.g. 2.1 as 5.1, and the bitrate of that layout. A layout none of them holds, such as 7.1(wide) or 7.1.4, is mixed to the one with its channel count, at most 7.1.

[audio.lossless] applies to tracks with a lossless source (dts only as DTS-HD MA). FLAC stores floating-point PCM as 24-bit integers. [audio.codec_rules] applies by source codec as ffprobe names it. Both take the keys above except language_whitelist. Unset keys come from [audio], except a non-empty options, which replaces it. A matching codec rule wins over [audio.lossless].

[audio.codec_rules]
opus = { mode = "copy" }
eac3 = { mode = "encode", codec = "libopus", bitrate = "192k" }

⁠[subtitles]

Chapters are always kept. MP4 text subtitles become SRT, and subtitle tracks Matroska cannot hold, such as TTML, are skipped.

⁠[scene_detection]

⁠License

Copyright © Iven Schlösser. avet is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only⁠. You may use, modify and redistribute it. Anyone distributing a modified version must release it under the same license and make its source code available.

The Docker image and the AppImage bundle third-party software, each under its own license:

• SVT-AV1⁠ and SVT-AV1-HDR⁠: BSD 3-Clause Clear License with the Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0
• FFmpeg⁠: GPL-3.0-or-later in the image, GPL-2.0-or-later in the AppImage
• FFMS2⁠: MIT as source, GPL as a binary built against FFmpeg
• Vship⁠: MIT NON-AI License
• libvmaf⁠: BSD-2-Clause-Patent
• MKVToolNix⁠: GPL-2.0-only

The license texts are in /usr/share/licenses/ in the image and in usr/share/licenses/ and usr/share/doc/ inside the AppImage. The image's other Alpine packages name their licenses in the apk database.

avet is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, Dolby Laboratories or HDR10+ Technologies. "Dolby Vision" is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation, "HDR10+" is a trademark of HDR10+ Technologies, LLC.