VisualOn and Cires21 have published updated tests of the VisualOn Optimizer inside a transcoding pipeline spanning H.264, HEVC and AV1. The companies evaluated software encoding and hardware paths using NVIDIA NVENC, NETINT and Intel QuickSync, with VMAF used as the quality metric.
For software, NETINT and QuickSync paths, the study reports equal or higher VMAF with lower average bitrate. Software H.264 and HEVC ladders showed claimed reductions of 59 to 76 per cent. NETINT and QuickSync results ranged from 39 to 63 per cent bitrate savings, with lower ladder rungs gaining up to 19 and 29 VMAF points respectively.
NVIDIA NVENC behaved differently: the report cites six-to-15-point VMAF improvements at approximately the same average bitrate rather than comparable savings. That difference is operationally important because it suggests optimisation benefits cannot be transferred blindly between encoder implementations.
The figures come from vendor-sponsored research and are not yet an independent benchmark. Public summaries do not expose the complete source set, presets, ladder definitions, encode speed, compute cost or subjective review. Operators should reproduce tests with their own content and quality thresholds before converting headline percentages into capacity plans.
