You might be misunderstanding what I tried to say...
I know how metrics work.
I merely tried to point out that I think Netflix is abusing their internal VMAF findings to justify streaming at much lower bitrates.
I would argue they lowered their bitrate target (at least partly) as a result of their use of VMAF.
No matter how clean your video is, 1080p x264 will not be good at 2000-3000kbit/s, especially in the backgrounds.
Maybe you understand where I am coming from when you look at this blog:
https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/...n-7e99442b62a2
In theory, the arguments in that blog are well reasoned.
Use low bitrates for cartoons and clean video, use high bitrates for lots of movement, grain, and so on...
However, especially within the last year or so (look at recent releases of Netflix series for instance), they have moved to the aforementioned low bitrates as highest 1080p target bitrate. On live action video!
While 2000-3000kbit/s is indeed completely fine for Cartoon, it is not for live action video.
Is that VMAF's fault? Of course not.
But I think Netflix saw that the VMAF scores are not too bad for 1080p video at those bitrates, so they decided to lower their targets accordingly.
Sorry for the long off-topic discussion...
Originally, I just wanted to make a little joke and complain about Netflix's quality in the process...
I did not mean for it to drift so far away from x265!
