Mpeg-4 Codec Comparisons

The next-generation High Efficiency Video codec HEVC, H.265, has hit a major public milestone thanks to the work of the developer MultiCoreWare.

Which video compression codec is better. Why comparing still pictures doesn t help much if you don t know what to look for. Important: I do not compare any video.

Introduction to Video Codec Comparison How to compare video codecs. How to do it correctly. Old Video Codecs Comparison May 2003 Comparison of more than 30.

MSU Video Codec Comparison

Eighth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison - Standard Version MSU Graphics Media Lab Video Group.

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Look at this picture. Pretty sharp and with lots of details. Compare the leaves in the background with the leaves in the next picture. Compare the balloon stars and compare the face. Compare the clothes. Everywhere you see more details. But maybe you like this picture more? How about this face? It shows a soft skin. If you look carefully over the face you will notice, that no detail is missing, they are just smooth. Now, to tell you the truth, the picture in the middle is the original. The picture to the left shows LESS details than the original one. It simply sharpens the edges, by turning light gray to white and dark gray to black simply speaking. So you LOSE details by losing black-white gradients. That's what they do in cooking books (to make the food look sharper and more crisp). You can see that white border of the girl's cap (her name is Christina). There isn't anything like that in the original picture. This shining around dark areas is called "Aura". The picture to the right is blurred to your satisfaction. That is exactly what fashion magazines are doing with faces and what they do in movies, TV shows and TV sets to fight snow and face wrinkles. Jennifer Lopez' (a former background dancer for Janet Jackson) face in this scene (and the whole video) is really smooth: The following face is so smoooooth, no boy-friend will ever stick to her: (This pic had the name Chloe Jones at the upper right corner, so I guess that is her name. What a lonely girl...) This is an interesting picture, however, because they made her skin smooth, but sharpened her eyes, lips and hair. So if you see a comparison of codecs and one still seems to show more details than the other (like the left picture here), it does not mean, that it a better codec. It could simply sharpen (and thus lose details). And if you see one codec that shows less blocks than the others then it could simply mean, that it blurs (like the picture right). The best way to fight codec details loss is to set the parameters to "Constant quality" instead of "Constant bitrate". There is another thing about codec comparisons. They are not fair: DivX is an MPEG codec. That means that it shows a certain kind of compression artifacts: Typical MPEG artefacts are blocks and mosquitoes. Here are 2 captures from the music clip George Michael & Whitney Houston "If I told you that" MPEG produces Blocking Artefacts in scenes with many changes (=fast movements, scene change, a lot of motion). See the capture above (Britney Spears "I love rock 'n' roll"): This is a frame where there was a scene change, there's a lot of funny paper flying around and she's dancing. Really blocky. Would you believe when I told you, that the sound to this picture was aired in mono (instead of stereo)? 64kbit/s? Mpeg Layer 2? On a music channel (MTV India)? Modern TV Quality. As another artifact MPEG produces Mosquitoes at sharp contrasts like mouth/skin, ocean/sky, dark hair/bright wall. See around Whitney's mouth and eyes (no, it's not because she just came from a cocaine session). Sometimes you see compressed text in the internet like these message boxes with their typical artefacts. I created these sample message boxes: JPEG artefacts around the text. GIF artefacts: Clear text, but less colors (see the title bar and the question mark). If you take footage, that has already been compressed by another MPEG codec, then you amplify those artefacts. So if you record a digital TV broadcast and then encode it with DivX this means, MPEG-2 (broadcast) is encoded with MPEG-4 (DivX). The same applies to DV (which also uses MPEGlike compression methods) and DVD (which is MPEG-2). VCD is MPEG-1 and SVCD is MPEG-2. But not only that compression artefacts are increased, to compress them it takes more bandwidth (in theory), of course: Because how should the codec know what is an artifact and what is part of the image? So it has to encode the artifacts also. Thus you increase artefacts AND file size. I have made experiments though, that show, that file size actually decreases when recompressing. Why? Because DivX blurs and darkens footage when compressing and compresses better when blurred. So each recompression makes your movie more blurred (and darker) and thus compresses better. That means, to be fair you'd have to compress a RAW clip and compare then. To see how re-encoding (re-compressing) affects the quality see my recompression comparison. There is another thing about codec comparisons. Quality vs. Filesize: One can scrutinize for quality at high bitrates or for file size at low bit rates. Please always pay attention what the purpose of the test is: "How good does the picture look when we compress the content to death?" or "What is the bitrate I need to make the content look DVD-like". These are 2 different approaches.

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Introduction to comparison. The following characteristics are compared in video codecs comparisons: Video quality per bitrate or range of bitrates.

Compression project >> Video Area Home Eighth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison released! MSU Video Codec Comparison Introduction to Video Codec Comparison How to compare video codecs? How to do it correctly? Old Video Codecs Comparison (May 2003) Comparison of more than 30 video codecs on several sequences and with different parameters. Lossless Video Codecs Comparison (October 2004) Comparison of 15 lossless codecs in RGB, YUV2, YV12 colorspaces. MPEG-4 SP/ASP Video Codecs Comparison (March 2005) The newest versions of MPEG-4 codecs comparison for their using by an ordinary user for home video compression. Also shown the evolution of the DivX codec. JPEG 2000 Image Codecs Comparison (September 2005) Many JPEG 2000 codecs and one JPEG codec are compared. Difference between several implementations of the standard is shown. First Annual MPEG-4 AVC/ H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (January 2005) Comparison of 6 codecs with default parameters. Three codecs were kindly provided by the codecs developers. Second Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison(December 2005) Second annual H.264 codecs comparison. Comparison of 8 codecs. Six of them were kindly provided by the codecs developers. Subjective Comparison of Modern Video Codecs (February 2006) Four modern codecs were tested using SAMVIQ method (experts estimated video quality without information about the codec that was used). MPEG-2 Video Decoders Comparison (May 2006) Comparative analysis of quality of 8 MPEG-2 decoders while decoding distorted streams. This question is topical for satellite broadcasting and, to a lesser degree, for DVD video playback. WMP and JPEG 2000 Comparison (October 2006) Earlier tested image codecs of JPEG 2000 standard (see JPEG 2000 image codecs comparison) are comparing with new WMP standard from Microsoft. Third Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (December 2006) Third annual H.264 codecs comparison. Additionally to traditional comparison of this year codecs, over-years comparison was performed (comparison of all tested last three years codecs). Lossless Video Codecs Comparison 2007 (March 2007) Comparison of 16 modern lossless video codecs was performed. Report includes the following topics: compression ratio analysis, speed analysis and parallelization capabilities. Fourth Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (December 2007) Fourth annual H.264 codecs comparison. Additionally to traditional comparison new type of analysis with synthetic sequences was performed. Also new sequences, new codecs, new presets were used in this comparison. Options Analysis of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Codec x264 (December 2008) Options of one of the best codecs x264 are analyzed to find best option values and best presets for various encoding speed. Fifth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (May 2009) Fifth H.264 codecs comparison. New types of analysis, new sequences, new codecs, new presets were used in this comparison. Sixth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (May 2010) Sixth H.264 codecs comparison. New sequences, new codecs and new presets were used in this comparison. Seventh MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (May 2011) Seventh H.264 codecs comparison. New sequences, new codecs and new presets were used in this comparison. GPU-encoders comparison. New quality metrics. Eight MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (May 2012) Eighth H.264 codecs comparison. New HDTV and Videoconference sequences, new codecs and new presets were used in this comparison. GPU-encoders comparison (including Ivy Bridge and NVIDIA platforms). Ninth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (Dec 2013) HEVC Video Codecs Comparison - 2015 (Oct 2015) See all MSU Video Codec Comparisons MSU video codecs comparisons resources: Introduction to Video Codecs Comparison Second Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codec Comparison (December 2005) Lossless Video Codecs Comparison 2007 (March 2007) Options Analysis of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Codec x264 (December 2008) Sixth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2010) Seventh MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2011) Eighth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2012) Ninth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (Dec 2013) Other resources Video resources: 3D and stereo video Projects on 3D and stereo video processing and analysis MSU Video Quality Measurement tools Programs with different objective and subjective video quality metrics implementation MSU Video Quality Measurement Tool - objective metrics for codecs and filters comparison (Top!) Codecs comparisons Objective and subjective quality evaluation tests for video and image codecs 9-th MPEG4-AVC/H.264 Comparison Ext. link: x264 parameters efficiency comparison Public MSU video filters Here are available VirtualDub and AviSynth filters. For a given type of digital video filtration we typically develop a family of different algorithms and implementations. Generally there are also versions optimized for PC and hardware implementations (ASIC/FPGA/DSP). These optimized versions can be licensed to companies. Please contact us for details via video(at)graphics.cs.msu_ru. Filters for companies We are working with Intel, Samsung, RealNetworks and other companies on adapting our filters other video processing algorithms for specific video streams, applications and hardware like TV-sets, graphics cards, etc. Some of such projects are non-exclusive. Also we have internal researches. Please let us know via video(at)graphics.cs.msu_ru if you are interested in acquiring a license for such filters or making a custom R&D project on video processing, compression, computer vision. Semiautomatic Objects Segmentation Deblurring filter Video Content Search

Dec 29, 2004 Codecs.com Download VP6 6.4.2 : VP6 is a low bitrate and high-quality codec for playing and encoding videos. It can be used as a plug-in.

A video codec is an electronic circuit or software that compresses or decompresses digital video, thus converting raw uncompressed digital video to a compressed.