Calculate VMAF, VMAF NEG, VMAF v1, SSIMULACRA2, Butteraugli and ColorVideo VDP on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Apple GPUs, alongside PSNR, SSIM and XPSNR. Compare encodes with frame-exact playback that switches between the source and each encode instantly to easily spot differences.
VideoMetricsLab v2.3 adds VVC film grain support, adds AV2 decoding, improves VVC scoring speed up to 2x, AMD GPU speed 1.3x-2x, and adds back Vship as an option. Mac OS is now feature parity with Windows. Various bug fixes including wrong scoring for H.264 lossless, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 Part 2 on certain GPUs. See the changelog.
Metrics
- VMAF v0.6.1, VMAF NEG, VMAF v1, PSNR, SSIM, XPSNR, SSIMULACRA2, Butteraugli and ColorVideo VDP, for many test videos at once.
- VMAF models for standard, phone, 4K and HFR viewing.
- Film grain scored as viewers see it, or without it: VVC, AV1 and AFGS1 grain, at any bit depth.
Fast on any GPU
- VMAF, VMAF NEG and VMAF v1 on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Apple GPUs with libvmaf-fast: VMAF and VMAF NEG 3.2x-4.4x faster than with CUDA on NVIDIA, and VMAF v1 up to 17x faster.
- SSIMULACRA2, Butteraugli and ColorVideo VDP on any GPU with Vship-fast (Vulkan), as accurate as libjxl and pycvvdp; stock Vship for any video you choose or when Vship-fast fails, and libjxl on the CPU calculates SSIMULACRA2 and Butteraugli when no GPU can.
- PSNR, SSIM and XPSNR 2.7x-11x faster, calculated in the app.
- GPU video decoding, with software decoding for the rest: VVC with Fraunhofer's VVdeC, and AV2 with VideoLAN's dav2d.
Compare and inspect
- Frame-exact playback that switches instantly between the source and each encode (hold S), with zoom, at up to 120 fps in 4K HDR, with film grain shown as it is scored.
- Metric curves, statistics and per-frame scores (per second for ColorVideo VDP), with each metric's best and worst results highlighted.
- Bitrate by frame, second or GOP.
Workflow
- Black bars and resolution mismatches handled automatically.
- Results saved and reloaded automatically; a metric added later is the only one calculated.
- Scores and statistics exported as CSV or JSON.
- Drag and drop videos, sort and reorder the list, and a dark theme.
- A command line,
VideoMetricsLab-cli, for scripts, which also reads raw video streams and .yuv files. - Two test videos calculated in parallel on many-core CPUs.
- A native C++ app: a 34 MB download on Windows.
Configure each test independently, inspect its codec and bitrate, and calculate multiple quality metrics in one run.
Compare real per-frame curves and distribution statistics. The frame readout shows both test values and their signed delta at the same moment.
Switch instantly between the reference and test encodes during playback, or seek to an exact frame for close inspection.
Analyze video-only bitrate independently by frame, second, or GOP.
- Select a reference video.
- Add one or more test videos.
- Choose the metrics to calculate.
- Click Calculate metrics.
Results appear in the video table and Metric Graphs tab as each test finishes. Video Compare and Bitrate Viewer can also be used without calculating metrics.
For detailed instructions, see the User Guide.
Download the Windows or macOS zip from the latest release,
extract it, and run VideoMetricsLab.exe (Windows) or VideoMetricsLab.app
(macOS). The macOS app is not notarized: the first time, open it from System
Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway.
The app requires FFmpeg 9 or newer with libvmaf. FFmpeg is not bundled; the
app prompts for its location if it is not available on PATH. On macOS,
brew install ffmpeg-full installs it (with zscale, which HDR video needs to be shown in SDR).
Requires Visual Studio 2022, CMake 3.25+, Qt 6.12 and MinGW-w64; see the contributing guide:
./scripts/build_release.ps1 -QtPath C:\Qt\6.12.0\msvc2022_64- Windows 10 or 11, or macOS 14.4 or later on Apple silicon
- FFmpeg 9+ with
ffmpeg,ffprobe, andlibvmaf - On Windows, an optional NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD GPU for hardware decoding and the GPU metrics
cd cpp
cmake --preset windows -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:/Qt/6.12.0/msvc2022_64
cmake --build --preset windows-release
ctest --preset windows-releaseBuild the distributable with ./scripts/build_release.ps1. See the
build guide and contributing guide for more.
User Guide · Troubleshooting · Known Issues · Architecture · Changelog · Security
Licensed under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2026 4KVCD. Third-party components retain their own licenses; see Third-Party Notices.
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See the changelog for what changed in each version.