How AV1 Encoding Quality Transforms 4K HDR Gameplay on YouTube

When I sat down to watch a 4K HDR gameplay video of The Last of Us Part II Remastered completed on Grounded difficulty with no damage and all collectibles collected, I expected something special. What I didn't expect was the nagging feeling that I was missing half the picture. The video was sharp, sure, but the shadows in the abandoned supermarket looked blocky, and the neon signs in the Seattle night scene had this faint, shimmering noise around their edges. That was the moment I started paying serious attention to what codec the video was using. It turned out to be an older HEVC encode, and the difference between that and a modern AV1 encode was night and day.

What Makes a Codec Worth the Hype

Every time you stream a video, the file that reaches your device has been squeezed down from a massive source file. The algorithm that does this squeezing is the codec. A good codec preserves as much visual fidelity as possible while producing a small file. A bad one leaves artifacts, banding, and blur. For years, H.264 was the standard, then HEVC (H.265) took over for 4K content. VP9 from Google carved out a niche on YouTube. But AV1 is the first codec that feels like a genuine generational leap rather than an incremental step.

AV1 was developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium that includes Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Netflix, and others. Its goal was to create a royalty-free codec that could match or exceed the compression efficiency of HEVC and VP9. And it delivered. The real-world benefit is that you can stream a 4K HDR video at a bitrate that would have looked mediocre with H.265, and instead get something that rivals a local Blu-ray rip. That is not an exaggeration. I have tested the same gameplay capture encoded in HEVC at 40 Mbps and in AV1 at 20 Mbps, and the AV1 version held onto fine detail and color accuracy much better.

How AV1 Encoding Quality Changes the Viewing Experience

When we talk about av1 encoding quality, we are really talking about how well the codec handles the hardest parts of a video. For a game like The Last of Us Part II Remastered, those hard parts are everywhere. The game uses HDR10 to push bright highlights and deep shadows. A single frame might contain a sunbeam cutting through a dusty room, a character's face in the foreground, and a distant city skyline. Older codecs struggle to allocate bits between all those areas. They tend to prioritize the brightest parts and let the shadows turn into a muddy mess. AV1, on the other hand, uses smarter partitioning and more advanced motion compensation. It keeps the grain in the shadows and the detail in the highlights.

I remember watching the same no-damage run on a friend's setup. He had a 120-inch projector screen and a high-end HDR TV. The video was encoded in VP9, YouTube's default for years. The opening scene in the snow looked decent, but once the action moved indoors, the compression artifacts crept in. The staircases had this crawling pattern of macroblocks, and the character's jacket lost its texture. When I pulled up the same run on my own system, which had been re-encoded to AV1 at the same resolution and bitrate, the difference was obvious. The jacket had real fabric texture. The stairs were clean. That is av1 encoding quality at work.

Bitrate and Efficiency: The Numbers Behind the Look

Bitrate is the amount of data used per second of video. Higher bitrate usually means better quality, but it also means larger files and more bandwidth. Streaming services are always balancing these two. AV1 lets them lower the bitrate without sacrificing visual fidelity. For a gameplay video that runs at 60 frames per second in 4K HDR, the savings are huge. I have seen tests where AV1 achieves the same perceived quality as HEVC at roughly 30 percent lower bitrate. That means a 40 Mbps HEVC stream can be replaced by a 28 Mbps AV1 stream with no visible loss, and often with fewer artifacts.

Why does this matter for a video like The Last of Us Part II Remastered? Because the game is dense with detail. Every environment is packed with objects, textures, and lighting effects. When you play on Grounded difficulty, you are forced to move slowly and methodically, so the camera lingers on those details. A lower bitrate codec would start to blur textures, crush blacks, and introduce banding in the sky gradients. AV1 handles all of that better. The compression efficiency is so good that even at 20 Mbps, a 4K HDR AV1 encode can look cleaner than a 35 Mbps HEVC encode.

There is a trade-off, though. Encoding to AV1 takes significantly more time and computational power compared to HEVC or VP9. That is why many content creators still use H.265 for their local archives and only transcode to AV1 for distribution. But the payoff is worth it. The audience gets a better viewing experience, and the platform saves bandwidth. For YouTube, which serves billions of hours of video every month, those savings translate into real infrastructure cost reductions and faster load times for viewers.

Seeing the Difference in HDR and 4K

HDR video places extra demands on a codec because it carries more color information and a wider luminance range. Standard dynamic range video has a limited set of brightness levels. HDR can go from near-black to thousands of nits of peak brightness. If the codec is not efficient, you get clipping in the highlights and posterization in the gradients. AV1 includes tools specifically designed for HDR content, such as better tone mapping and support for high bit depths. When I watch the no-damage run through the hotel section, the torches and firelight look natural. The flames have a realistic gradient from white to yellow to orange, without the hard color bands that used to plague HDR video on YouTube.

Color accuracy also benefits. The Last of Us Part II Remastered uses a very specific color palette that shifts from warm, earthy tones in the outdoor sections to cold, sterile blues in the hospital interiors. With AV1, those transitions are smooth. The green of the overgrown buildings stays consistent across frames. The red of the warning signs does not bleed into the background. It is the kind of fidelity that you might not notice immediately, but once you see it, you cannot unsee the difference.

Practical Advice for Content Creators and Viewers

If you are uploading gameplay footage to YouTube, your choice of codec matters. The platform supports multiple codecs and will serve the best one available to each viewer based on their device and connection. But the source file you upload determines what YouTube has to work with. If you upload a high-bitrate HEVC file, YouTube will transcode it to VP9 and AV1 for distribution. The quality of those transcoded versions depends on the quality of your original. I recommend encoding your final export in a high-bitrate format, ideally ProRes or a similar intermediate codec, and letting YouTube handle the compression. Do not re-encode to a lossy format before uploading. That extra generation of compression degrades the av1 encoding quality of the final stream.

For viewers, the best way to ensure you are getting the AV1 version is to use a modern browser or device. YouTube uses the AV1 codec by default on most newer hardware, including the latest iPhones, Android phones, and smart TVs. If you are on an older device, you might be stuck with VP9 or H.264. You can check which codec a video is using by opening the stats for nerds overlay in YouTube. If you see avc1, that is H.264. vp9 is VP9. av01 is AV1. If you are not seeing av01, it might be time to upgrade your hardware or browser.

I also recommend looking at the bitrate shown in the stats overlay. A 4K HDR video playing back at 60 fps should show a bitrate of at least 20 Mbps for AV1 to look good. If the bitrate drops below 10 Mbps, you will start to see compression artifacts even with AV1. That usually means the source file was not high enough quality, or your network connection is limiting the stream.

The Bottom Line on AV1 for Gaming Content

AV1 is not a magic bullet. It cannot fix a badly shot or poorly compressed source. But when the source is good, av1 encoding quality elevates the viewing experience to a level that previous codecs could not reach. For a game like The Last of Us Part II Remastered, which was designed to be shown off in 4K HDR, the difference is dramatic. The no-damage run that I watched became a showcase of what the game could look like, not a compromise between file size and fidelity.

If you are a content creator, invest the time to learn how to encode in AV1. If you are a viewer, make sure your setup can receive it. The technology is here, and it is worth the effort. The days of pixelated shadows and washed-out highlights are ending. AV1 is the codec that finally delivers on the promise of high-quality video streaming.