Auto compress videos to AV1 in background

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Yes. Tdarr, Unmanic, various scripts, I even started a thread in Self-Hosted/Homelabs (where this discussion probably should sit) where we're talking about encoding and @TheDreadPirate has essentially written what could be a standalone ffmpeg script to sift through folders and auto-encode with the settings of your choice. With AV1, the options are pretty specific to each type of content and particularly dependent upon the encoder that you choose. For instance, the QSV decoder I've heard is pretty lax about quality which I'm not excited about. I've had great luck with SVT-AV1, but refining film grain synthesis per show has been an art form. Even by episode for some shows it's difficult.

That's why I advised caution. I went this route previously and I regret it. I killed a lot of remux-quality content for some good-quality x265 encodes that I could've waited and thrown some AV1 encoding time at and had a pristine copy in my codec pairing of choice. I'm not saying don't do it, just be careful. Tools like Tdarr are a fully-automatic machine pistol with no safety.