Comparison of video codecs

A video codec is software or a device that provides encoding and decoding which may or may not include the use of video compression and/or decompression for digital video. The compression may employ lossy data compression, so quality measurement issues become important. Shortly after the compact disc became widely available as a digital-format replacement for analog audio, it became feasible to also store and use video in digital form. A variety of technologies soon emerged to do so. The primary goal for most methods of compressing video is to produce video that most closely approximates the fidelity of the original source and simultaneously deliver the smallest file size possible. However, there are also several other factors that can be used as a basis for comparison.

Introduction to comparison
The following characteristics are compared in video codecs comparisons: Video quality per bitrate (or range of bitrates). Commonly video quality is considered the main characteristic of codec comparisons. Video quality comparisons can be subjective or objective. Performance characteristics like compression/decompression speed, supported profiles/options, supported resolutions, supported rate control strategies etc. General software characteristics, for example: o Manufacturer o Supported OS (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) o Version number o Date of release o Type of license (commercial, free, open source) o Supported interfaces (VfW, DirectShow, etc.) o Price for codec (volume discounts, etc.)

Video quality
The quality the codec can achieve is heavily based on the compression format the codec uses. A codec is not a format, and there can be multiple codecs that implement the same compression specification for example, MPEG-1 codecs typically do not achieve quality/size ratio comparable to codecs that implement the more modern H.264 specification. But quality/size ratio of output produced by different implementations of the same specification can vary, too.

Prior to comparing codec video quality, it is important to understand that every codec can give a varying degree of quality for a given set of frames within a video sequence. Numerous factors play a role in this variability. First, all codecs have a bitrate control mechanism which is responsible for determining the bitrate and quality on a per-frame basis. A difference between variable bit rate (VBR) and constant bit rate (CBR) creates a trade-off between a consistent quality over all frames, and a more constant bitrate, which is required for some applications. Second, some codecs differentiate between different types of frames such as key frames and non-key frames, differing in their importance to overall visual quality and the extent to which they can be compressed. Third, quality depends on prefiltrations, that is included on all present-day codecs. Other factors can also come into play. For a sufficiently long clip, it is possible to select sequences which have suffered little from the compression and sequences which have suffered heavily, especially if CBR was used, in which the quality between frames can vary highly due to different amounts of compression needed to achieve a constant bitrate. So, in any one long clip such as a full length movie, any two codecs may perform quite differently on a particular sequence from the clip, while the codecs may be approximately equal (or the situation reversed) in quality over a wider sequence of frames. Press-releases and amateur forums sometimes select sequences known to favor a particular codec or style of rate control in reviews

Objective video quality

Objective video evaluation techniques are mathematical models that approximate results of subjective quality assessment, but are based on criteria and metrics that can be measured objectively and automatically evaluated by a computer program. Objective methods are classified based on the availability of the original video signal, which is considered to be of high quality (generally not compressed). Therefore, they can be classified as:

Full reference methods (FR), where the whole original video signal is available Reduced reference methods (RR), where only partial information of the original video is available, and No-reference methods (NR), where the original video is not available at all.

The main FR metrics are: Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) The most widely used video quality metric during the last 20 years (used approximately in 99% of scientific papers and in 20% of marketing materials). However, the validity of this metric is limited. It is only conclusive when the same codec (or codec type) and content is being compared. Structural similarity (SSim.) A new metric (suggested in 2004) which shows better results than PSNR at the cost of a reasonable increase in computational complexity. VQuad-HD an ITU-T J.341 standard

The new standard was recently (Jan 2011) approved by ITU-T as J.341. The new VQuad-HD algorithm was developed by Swissqual in 2008-2010. It was the best performing model in the HDTV competition to find the new standard that was organized by the independent and non-commercial Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG).More information on VQuad-HD can be found in the technical white paper "Video Quality Measurement for High Definition Video Signals" available for download from: white paper Some other metrics have been suggested by Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG), private companies, and universities, but are not widespread. The main comparison method is the so-called RD-curve (rate/distortion chart), where a metric value is plotted against the Y-axis and the bitrate against the X-axis. Some example NR metrics are: Blocking measure measurement power of so called blocking artefacts (extremely noticeable without deblocking filter usage on low bitrates) Blurring measure measurement of common video blurring (washout)

Subjective video quality

It is concerned with how video is perceived by a viewer and designates his or her opinion on a particular video sequence. Subjective video quality tests are quite expensive in terms of time (preparation and running) and human resources. There is an enormous number of ways of showing video sequences to experts and of recording their opinions. A few of them have been standardized. They are thoroughly described in ITU-R recommendation BT.500. Following subjective video quality comparison methods are used:

Double Stimulus Impairment Scale (DSIS) suggested in ITU-R BT.500-11. Double Stimulus Continuous Quality Scale (DSCQS) type I and type II suggested in ITU-R BT.500-11 Stimulus Comparison Adjectival Categorical Judgement (SCACJ) suggested in ITU-R BT.500-11 Subjective Assessment Method for Video Quality evaluation (SAMVIQ) MSU Continuous Quality Evaluation (MSUCQE)

The reason for measuring subjective video quality is the same as for measuring the Mean Opinion Score for audio. Opinions of experts can be averaged; average mark is usually given with confidence interval. Additional procedures

can be used for averaging, for example experts who give unstable results can be rejected (for instance, if their correlation with average opinion is small). In case of video codecs, this is a very common situation. When codecs with similar objective results show results with different subjective results, the main reasons can be: Pre- and postfilters are widely used in codecs. Commonly codecs use prefilters like video denoising, deflicking, deshacking, etc. Denoising and deflicking commonly maintain PSNR value, but increase visual quality (the best slow denoising filters also increase PSNR on middle and high bitrates). Deshacking seriously decreases PSNR, but increases visual quality. The same situation with postfilters deblocking and deringing maintain PSNR, but increase quality. Graining (suggested in H.264) essentially increases video quality especially on big plasma screens, but decrease PSNR.

Note: All filters worsen compression/decompression time, so they increase visual quality, but decrease speed. Motion estimation (ME) search strategy can also cause different visual quality for the same PSNR. So called true motion search commonly will not reach minimum sum of absolute differences (SAD) values in codec ME, but may result in better visual quality. Also such methods require more compression time. Rate control strategy. VBR commonly cause better visual quality marks than CBR for the same average PSNR values for sequences.

It is difficult to use long sequences for subjective testing. Commonly, three or four ten-second sequences are used, compared with full movies used for objective metrics. Sequence selection is important those sequences that are similar to the ones used by developers to tune their codecs are more competitive.

Performance comparison
Speed comparison
Number of frames per second (FPS) commonly used for compression/decompression speed measurement. The following issues should be considered when estimating probable codec performance differences: Decompression (sometimes compression) frame time uniformity. Big differences in this value can cause annoyingly jerky playback.

SIMD support by processor and codec e.g., MMX, SSE, SSE2, each of which change CPU performance on some kinds of tasks (often including those with which codecs are concerned). Multi-threading support by processor and codec (sometimes turning on Hyper-threading support (if available on a particular CPU) causes codec speed to decrease) RAM speed (generally important for most codec implemenations) Processor cache size (low values sometimes cause serious speed degradation, e.g. for CPUs with low cache such as several of the Intel Celeron series.) GPU usage by codec some codecs can drastically increase their performance by taking advantage of GPU resources.

So, for example, codec A (being optimized for memory usage, i.e. uses less memory) may give slower performance on modern computers (which are typically not memory limited) than codec B. The same pair of codecs may give opposite results if running on an older computer with reduced memory (or cache) resources.

Profiles support
Modern standards define a wide range of features and require very substantial software or hardware efforts and resources for their implementation. Only selected profiles of a standard are typically supported in any particular product. (This very common situation for H.264 implementations for example.) The H.264 standard includes the following seven sets of capabilities, which are referred to as profiles, targeting specific classes of applications: Baseline Profile (BP): Primarily for lower-cost applications with limited computing resources, this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications. Main Profile (MP): Originally intended as the mainstream consumer profile for broadcast and storage applications, the importance of this profile faded when the High profile was developed for those applications. Extended Profile (XP): Intended as the streaming video profile, this profile has relatively high compression capability and some extra tricks for robustness to data losses and server stream switching. High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for highdefinition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, for example). High 10 Profile (Hi10P): Going beyond today's mainstream consumer product capabilities, this profile builds on top of the High Profile adding support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision. High 4:2:2 Profile (Hi422P): Primarily targeting professional applications that use interlaced video, this profile builds on top of the High 10 Profile adding support for the 4:2:2 chroma sampling format while using up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.

High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile (Hi444PP): This profile builds on top of the High 4:2:2 Profile supporting up to 4:4:4 chroma sampling, up to 14 bits per sample, and additionally supporting efficient lossless region coding and the coding of each picture as three separate color planes. Multiview High Profile: This profile supports two or more views using both inter-picture (temporal) and MVC inter-view prediction, but does not support field pictures and macroblock-adaptive frame-field coding.

The standard also contains four additional all-Intra profiles, which are defined as simple subsets of other corresponding profiles. These are mostly for professional (e.g., camera and editing system) applications: High 10 Intra Profile: The High 10 Profile constrained to all-Intra use. High 4:2:2 Intra Profile: The High 4:2:2 Profile constrained to all-Intra use. High 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use. CAVLC 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use and to CAVLC entropy coding (i.e., not supporting CABAC).

Moreover, the standard now also contains three Scalable Video Coding profiles.

Scalable Baseline Profile: A scalable extension of the Baseline profile. Scalable High Profile: A scalable extension of the High profile. Scalable High Intra Profile: The Scalable High Profile constrained to all-Intra use.

An accurate comparison of codecs must take the profile variations within each codec into account.

Supported rate control strategies

Videocodecs rate control strategies can be classified as:

Variable bit rate (VBR) and Constant bit rate (CBR).

Variable bit rate (VBR) is a strategy to maximize the visual video quality and minimize the bit rate. On fast motion scenes, a variable bit rate uses more bits than it does on slow motion scenes of similar duration yet achieves a consistent visual quality. For real-time and non-buffered video streaming when the available bandwidth is fixed, e.g. in videoconferencing delivered on channels of fixed bandwidth, a constant bit rate (CBR) must be used. CBR is commonly used for videoconferences, satellite and cable broadcasting. VBR is commonly used for video CD/DVD creation and video in programs.

Software characteristics
Codecs list
General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP version method suppo se formats rt support rt date Patented, 2002- 1.1.1 BSDUnkno Unkno Xiph.org but freely Lossy Unknown 09-25 (2009) style wn wn licensed[*] MPL 1.1, GNU BBC Research 2008- 1.0.2 Lossy/lossl Unkno Unkno GPL 2, none Unknown Department 09-17 (2009) ess wn wn GNU LGPL 2.1 MPL 1.1, GNU 2008- 1.0.9 GPL 2, Lossy/lossl Unkno Unkno David Schleef none Unknown 02-22 (2010) GNU ess wn wn LGPL 2, MIT License r2019 GNU MPEG-4 Lossy/lossl x264 team 2003 No No No (2011) GPL AVC/H.264 ess Intel Intel Quick AVX Sync suppo Video rt suppo rt Unkno Unkno wn wn

Codec

libtheora (Theora)

diracresearch (Dirac)

Unkno Unkno wn wn

Schrdin ger (Dirac)

Unkno Unkno wn wn

x264

Partial

Unkno wn

Codec

Xvid

FFmpeg (libavcod ec)

FFavs (libavcod ec) Blackbird DivX

DivX

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP version method suppo se formats rt support rt date 1.3.2 GNU MPEG-4 Unkno Unkno Xvid team 2001 Lossy Unknown (2011) GPL ASP wn wn MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.261, 0.10.0 GNU H.263, VC- Lossy/lossl Unkno Unkno FFmpeg team 2000 Unknown (2012) LGPL 3, WMV7, ess wn wn WMV8, MJPEG, MPEG4v3, DV etc. MPEG-1, GNU MPEG-2, Lossy/lossl Unkno Unkno FFavs team 2009 0.0.3 Unknown LGPL MPEG-4 ess wn wn ASP etc. Forbidden 2006Propriet Unkno Unkno Technologies 2 Blackbird Lossy Unknown 01 ary wn wn plc MPEG-4 DivX Plus Propriet Unkno Unkno DivX, Inc. 2001 ASP, Lossy Unknown (2010) ary wn wn H.264 Microsoft' a hack of 3.20 s MPEGMicrosoft's Propriet Unkno Unkno 1998 alpha 4v3 (not Lossy Unknown MPEG-4v3 ary wn wn (2000) MPEG-4 codec compliant)

Intel Intel Quick AVX Sync suppo Video rt suppo rt Unkno Unkno wn wn

Unkno Unkno wn wn

Unkno Unkno wn wn Unkno Unkno wn wn Unkno Unkno wn wn Unkno Unkno wn wn

Codec

3ivx Nero Digital

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP version method suppo se formats rt support rt date 3ivx 5.0.2 Propriet MPEG-4 Unkno Unkno Technologies 2001 Lossy Unknown (2007) ary ASP wn wn Pty. Ltd. MPEG-4 Propriet Unkno Unkno Nero AG 2003 Unknown ASP, Lossy Unknown ary wn wn [16] H.264 Propriet Unknown ary Propriet Sorenson ary Video Propriet Sorenson ary Spark Patented, BSDbut freely style licensed Propriet VP4 ary Propriet VP5 ary Propriet VP6 ary Propriet VP7 ary BSD- Patented, style but freely licensed Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy Lossy

Intel Intel Quick AVX Sync suppo Video rt suppo rt Unkno Unkno wn wn Unkno Unkno wn wn

ProRes 422 / Apple Inc. 2007 ProRes 4444 Sorenson Sorenson Media 1998 Video Sorenson Sorenson Media 2002 Spark VP3 VP4 VP5 VP6 VP7 VP8 On2 Technologies On2 Technologies On2 Technologies On2 Technologies On2 Technologies On2 Technologies (now owned by 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2008

Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn

Codec

DNxHD Cinema Craft Encoder SP2 TMPGEnc Free Version

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP version method suppo se formats rt support rt date Google) Avid Propriet Unkno Unkno 2008 VC-3 Lossy Unknown Technology ary wn wn Custom Technology Corporation 2000 1.00.01.0 Propriet MPEG-1, 9 (2009) ary MPEG-2 Lossy

Intel Intel Quick AVX Sync suppo Video rt suppo rt Unkno Unkno wn wn

Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn

2.525.64. Propriet MPEG-1, Pegasys Inc. 2001 184 ary MPEG-2 (2008) WMV, VC1, (in early versions MPEG-4 Windows 9 (2003) Part 2 and Propriet Media Microsoft 1999 (WMV3 in not MPEGary Encoder FourCC) 4 compliant MPEG4v3, MPEG4v2) Cinepak Created by 1991 1.10.0.26 Propriet Unknown SuperMac, Inc. (1999) ary Currently maintained by Compression

Lossy

Lossy

Unkno Unkno Unkno Unkno Unknown wn wn wn wn

Lossy

Unkno Unkno Unknown Unkno Unkno wn wn wn wn

Codec

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First Intel nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Intel Quick Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A AVX Sync stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP suppo Video version method suppo se formats rt support rt suppo rt date rt

Technologies, Inc. Intel Corporation, Indeo Propriet Indeo Unkno Unkno currently 1992 5.2 Lossy Video ary Video wn wn offered by Ligos Corporation TrueMoti The Duck Propriet TrueMotio Unkno Unkno 1995 Lossy on S Corporation ary nS wn wn RealVide RealVide Propriet H.263, Unkno Unkno RealNetworks 1997 Lossy o o 10 ary RealVideo wn wn 20033.4 Propriet Unkno Unkno ACT-L3 Streambox Unknown Lossy 02-21 (2009) ary wn wn Ben Rudiak2.1.1 GNU Unkno Unkno Huffyuv 2000 none Lossless Gould (2003) GPL 2 wn wn 1.3.26 2004GNU Unkno Unkno Lagarith Ben Greenwood (2011-09none Lossless 10-04 GPL 2 wn wn 25) MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264/AVC MainConc MainConcept 8.8.0 Propriet , H.263, 1993 Lossy Yes Yes ept GmbH (2011) ary VC-3, MPEG-4 Part 2, DV, MJPEG etc. Elecard Elecard 2008 G4 Propriet MPEG-1, Lossy Unkno Unkno ] (2010) ary MPEG-2, wn wn

Unknown

Unkno Unkno wn wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn Unkno wn

Unkno wn Unkno Unknown wn Unkno Unknown wn Unkno Unknown wn Unknown Unknown

Unkno Unkno wn wn

Unknown

Unkno wn

Yes

Unknown Unkno Unkno wn wn

Codec

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. First Intel nVidi publi Patented Open ATI Intel Quick Latest Compres a Creator/Maint c Licens compres CL Stream/A AVX Sync stable sion CUDA ainer relea e sion suppo MD APP suppo Video version method suppo se formats rt support rt suppo rt date rt MPEG-4, AVC

The Xiph.Org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for everyone, for any purpose.[28]

DivX Plus is also known as DivX 8. The latest stable version for Mac is DivX 7 for Mac.

Native operating system support

Note that operating system support does not mean whether video encoded with the codec can be played back on the particular operating system for example, video encoded with the DivX codec is playable on Unix-like systems using free MPEG-4 ASP decoders (FFmpeg MPEG-4 or Xvid), but the DivX codec (which is a software product) is only available for Windows and Mac OS X.
Encoder Operating System Support Mac OS other Unix & Unix- Window Codec X like s 3ivx Yes Yes Yes Blackbird Yes Yes Yes Cinepak Yes No Yes DivX Yes No Yes FFmpeg Yes Yes Yes RealVideo Yes Yes Yes Schrdinger Yes Yes Yes (Dirac)

Encoder Operating System Support Mac OS other Unix & Unix- Window Codec X like s Sorenson Video 3 Yes No Yes Theora Yes Yes Yes x264 Yes Yes Yes Xvid Yes Yes Yes Elecard No No Yes

Technical details
Codec Blackbird Cinepak Dirac Sorenson 3 Theora RealVideo Elecard Compression type Lossy compression Lossy compression Lossy/Lossless compression Lossy compression Lossy compression Lossy compression Lossy compression Basic algorithm Unknown Vector quantization Wavelet compression Unknown Discrete cosine transform Discrete cosine transform Unknown Highest supported bitrate Unknown Unknown Unlimited Unknown 2 Gibit/s Unknown Unlimited Highest supported resolution 384288 (PAL), 320240 (NTSC) Unknown Unlimited Unknown 1,048,5601,048,560 Unknown 16k Variable frame rate Yes Unknown Yes Unknown Via chaining[*] Yes Yes

Theora streams with different frame rates can be chained in the same file, but each stream has a fixed frame rate.

Freely available codecs comparisons

List of freely available comparisons and their content description:
Name of comparison Series of Doom9 codec comparisons Type of comparison Series of subjective comparison of popular codecs Date(s) of publication 2002 2003 2005 List of compared codecs Comments

Subjective comparison with DivX4.12, On2 VP3, XviD 1/25 and WMV8 and DivX5.01, XviD 3/27 and ON2 VP4 at first version convenient visualization Dirac, Elecard AVC HP, libavcodec MPEG-4,

Series of MSU annual H.264 codecs comparisons

Series of objective H.264 codecs comparisons with MPEG-4 ASP reference

2004 2005 Jan. 2005 Dec. 2006 Dec. 2007 Dec. 2009 May 2010 Apr.

NeroDigital ASP, QuickTime 7, Snow, Theora, VideoSoft H.264 HP, XviD 1.1 beta 2 in last one 2005 (Jan.): Mpegable AVC, Moonlight H.264, MainConcept H.264, Fraunhofer IIS, Ateme MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, Videosoft H.264, DivX Pro 5.1.1 (Not 264! Used for comparison with H.264 codecs as well tuned codec from previous generation MPEG-4 ASP) 2005 (Dec.): DivX 6.0 (MPEG-4 ASP reference), ArcSoft H.264, Ateme H.264, ATI H.264, Elecard H.264, Fraunhofer IIS H.264, VSS H.264, x264 2006: DivX 6.2.5 (MPEG-4 ASP reference), MainConcept H.264, Intel H.264, VSS H.264, x264, Apple H.264, (partially), Sorenson H.264 (partially) Detailed objective comparisons 2007: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP codec), MainConcept H.264, Intel H.264, x264, AMD H.264, Artemis H.264 2009: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP codec), Dicas H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel IPP H.264, MainConcept H.264, x264 2010: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP codec), DivX H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel MediaSDK AVC/H.264, MainConcept H.264, Microsoft Expression, Encoder, Theora, x264 2004 (14 codecs): Alpary v2.0, AVIzlib v2.2.3, CamStudio GZIP v1.0, CorePNG v0.8.2, FFV1 ffdshow 08/08/04, GLZW v1.01, HuffYUV v2.1.1, Lagarith v1.0.0.1, LEAD JPEG v1.0.0.1, LOCO v0.2, in 2007 more detailed MindVid v1.0 beta 1, MSUlab beta v0.2.4, MSUlab report with new codecs v0.5.2, PicVideo JPEG v.2.10.0.29, VBLE beta including first standard H.264 (x264) 2007 (16 codecs): Alpary, ArithYuv, AVIzlib, CamStudio GZIP, CorePNG, FastCodec, FFV1, Huffyuv, Lagarith, LOCO, LZO, MSU Lab, PICVideo, Snow, x264, YULS Different versions of DivX was also compared. The DivX 5.2.1, DivX 4.12, DivX 3.22, MS MPEG-4 3688 v3, Xvid results may be XviD 1.0.3, 3ivx D4 4.5.1, OpenDivX 0.3 erroneous, as deblocking was disabled for it while used for DivX. DivX 6.0, Xvid 1.1.0, x264, WMV 9.0 (2 bitrates for PSNR via VQM via SSIM

Series of Lossless Video Codecs Comparison

Two size and time comparisons of lossless codecs (with lossless checking)

2004 Oct. 2007 Mar.

MSU MPEG-4 codecs comparison Subjective

Objective comparison of MPEG4 codecs Scientifically accurate

2005 Mar.

2006

Comparison of Modern Video Codecs MPEG-2 Video Decoders Comparison

subjective comparison using 50 experts and SAMVIQ methodology Objective MPEG-2 Decoders comparison

Feb.

every codec)

comparison was also done Objectly tested (100 times per stream) decoders "crash test" (test on damaged stream like scratched DVD or satellite samples) Sometimes comparison is short (up to one text line per codec)

Codecs comparison

Personal subjective opinion

bitcontrol MPEG-2 Video Decoder, DScaler MPEG2 Video Decoder, Elecard MPEG-2 Video Decoder, ffdshow 2006 MPEG-4 Video Decoder (libavcodec), InterVideo Video May. Decoder, Ligos MPEG Video Decoder, MainConcept MPEG Video Decoder, Pinnacle MPEG-2 Decoder 3ivx, Avid AVI 2.02, Cinepak, DivX 3.11, DivX 4.12, DivX 5.0.2, DV, Huffyuv, Indeo 3.2, Indeo 4.4, Indeo 5.10, Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, Microsoft 2003 RLE, Microsoft Video 1, XviD, 3ivx, Animation, Nov. Blackmagic 10-bit, Blackmagic 8-bit, Cinepak, DV, H.261, H.263, Motion-JPEG, MPEG-4 Video, PNG, Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3

Evaluation of Dirac and Theora VP8 versus x264

Scientific paper Objective and subjective quality comparison of VP8 and x264

Quite detailed comparison of software available in Q2 2009 Dirac, Dirac Pro, Theora I, H.264, Motion JPEG2000 (the 2008; However, a buggy tested codecs are from Q2-2008) Mar. version of ffmpeg2Theora was used VQM, SSIM and PSNR for 19 CIF video clips with bit-rates 2010 VP8, x264 of 100, 200, 500 and 1000 Jun. kbit/s