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ExtremeTech Wages War of the Codecs
prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech tested Windows Media, DivX, QuickTime/Sorenson and QuickTime/MPEG4 codecs. They encoded clips from Matrix Reloaded, Monsters, Inc., X2 and Spider-Man. QuickTime/Sorenson won the encoding speed contest, for the quality tests read the entire review, as each movie sample was encoded with 500KB and 1MB bitrates. Video samples provided on the site as well, so see for yourself."
They expect to have their opinion valued on Slashdot when they don't review the open source video codec? (It generally wins in other tests.)
a/.ing "video samples provided on the site as well, so see for yourself."
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
... pale in comparison to ASCII-mation.
Episode four in under a meg!
"Video samples provided on the site as well, so see for yourself."
/. Good one!
Yeah, as if there was any chance of THAT happening after you submitted that site to
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Bah, they should have used the nipple scene from Spider Man. The rest of the movie was a total wash.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I took a look at there sample images and found very little difference (other than MPEG4 obviously) in their quality.
It is very difficult for ME to decide between them. I have never actually seen any QT movies up for download as far as real movies go. Most movies are encoded with divx and seem to work just fine.
Do people really care about minor differences in quality when the file sizes are down to 710mb? I know I don't. Blurred motion is just something I deal with when I download something.
Encoding time is important only if you do this regularly. For those of us just watching a movie it doesn't matter. Whatever gives me the smallest file size with a decent picture is what I want to go w/.
Looks like WMP9 won overall... Sure QT may be fast, but it looks like poop most of the time...
Thanks to the hard work of the Mplayer team, I can play any video format I want. If you havent tried it, you should.
Get mplayer
found here
How do they expect me to keep pirating Hollywood movies if they keep changing the damn codec?!
Dont want to piss off the BSD crowd either!
I'm suprised XviD, an open source, MPEG-4 compliant codec wasn't tested. It's quickly becoming a standard for the transfer of large movies, and its open source nature has all of the usual benefits: alternatives, power and no constraints or adware. I suggest anyone planning on encoding video seriously considers it. XviD.org
donde estan?
I wonder how much better the QT/Sorenson and QT/MPEG4 (and maybe divX, dunno if there's an encoder) testing would have been if they were done on a Mac and the Velocity Engine could have been utilized?
Because Windows Media wins the quality shootout, they say "check the site". You have to know that if DivX won the quality tests, it would be in all caps in the headline! Ha!
Moderators, wake up!
If you do check the site you will see that Windows Media didn't win - it was a toss up.
I didn't expect Apple's MPEG4 implementation to win this test, but seriously, WTF is up? Does it really suck that much?
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
OK, the article blurb claims that QT/Sorenson had the fastest encoding times, but also had the third-worst quality (only QT/MPEG-4 was worse). DivX seems to have the best quality, which, in my opinion, should be the end goal.
Think about it, how many times are you going to encode a movie? How many times are you going to watch it? Typically, you are going to encode once and probably watch it multiple times. Therefore, I would happily accept a little longer processing time in the beginning if that means I will end up with a better quality production.
I was upset when I herad that HD-DVD will be in M$ WMV format I was upset. After reading tons of reviews and seeing results I am pretty impressed. Also the compression ratio is amazing. I wonder who they stole this off of :-)
Here's their most recent codec shootout with 3ivx, Divx, ffvfw, Nero, Real, On2 and Xvid. Xvid wins.
A useful site for all things high(ish) quality video encoding, aimed at dvd backups to cd, is Doom9 - see their last round of codec comparisons. (Frame based, so you'll need to click through from the beginning to get the menu frames etc.)
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
Posting still images isn't the best way to point out video artifacts due to compression. Post five seconds of compressed material (all of this qualifies under fair use) and let the users see the artifacts themselves. The human eye is much more likely to spot the artifacts in a movie because of our perception of motion.
Sorenson Pro (which has 2-pass and VBR encoding) isn't available in the $30 QTPro package. Use Sorenson Squeeze or MediaCleaner.
Also, QuickTime's MPEG-4 encoder is not the best MPEG-4 encoder out there. But there are better ones available, and of course MPEG-4 being a standard, the output of those other tools will be playable in QT Player.
So to make the comparison valid, both in terms of encoding speed an quality, some other tool should've been used.
What a wishy-washy article. To sum up and save you the 2 minutes of your life to read that article, all 4 techs are good, and they are all good for something, bad at others. I wonder if the author could have sat on the fence any MORE when comparing the codecs.
I for one, will continue to obey my DivX Masters, they have always been good to me. It seems that the author had a hard-on for QuickTime and M$, both of which annoy the ever living crap out of me... QuickTime, with it's little icon in the toolbar that just won't go away, and Microsoft because I just can't trust them to not tell MPAA which movies I have on my HDD.
$0.02 Flamebaiting, Trolling response concluded.
(and my Karma just got back to Neutral, dang it)
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I wonder what people are going to say about WMP9
:)
People wont say a word about WMP9 but they will question where XviD was in these tests...
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Episode 4 in Ascii-mation
Come on! Are we now suddenly supposed to actually read those frickin' articles? Just tell me who won. This is the internet and my attention span ... wait, what's that shiny thing? ...
You only need to look at the scene to know what codec is in this month. It's Xvid by a long margin, most TV-shows (Stargate, Enterprise, whatever), DVD-rips, Anime etc. are encoded with it. MP3 and AC3 are predictably dominating the sound codec, with many TV-shows now also making the transition to full AC3 (well, the DVD rips of them at least).
Test of some scenes from copyrighted movies? What're the results for? What format is best downloaded off of Kazaa?
And the samples are all live action.. Test encoding some hand drawn animation (ie; an old bugs bunny), a computer generated animation, a anime style animation, a dialogue type scene, a live action scene with a lot of action, black and white vs color, etc, etc.
The types of images on screen greatly affect the performance of different algorithms.
Plus, each codec has about a million tweaks and optimizations for different types of footage.
I doubt highly that there's one clear "winner". It's really not that simple.
Which is why I hate sites like ExtremeTech that always have to boil it down to "this product is the best, the rest suck!".
Like the ATI vs nVidia flamewars. ATI may benchmark faster, yet nVidia has effects in games ATI lacks. There is no clear "this one is the best". Or Intel vs AMD or Linux vs Windows, etc, etc..
Nothing in the realm of computer science is that simple.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the source was itself the result of mpeg encoding, it could unfairly impact the ability of the various codecs to handle the content. On the flip side, much of the content people are encoding is actually decoded content, i.e. from a digital camcorder, etc.
What would be interesting is taking the original raw film footage (that hasn't been digitally compressed with a lossy method) and encoding, then comparing the results.
Exactly what I was going to say.
Not fucking fair tests if they dont have half the competition.
Where can I download the movies?
As sad as it sounds, I'm not surprised that XviD was left out. After all, alot of these reviewers pay attentions to what is being *marketted*. But I am surprised that On2 failed to get their VP4 Personal Codec noticed by this reviewer. I guess On2's marketting group dropped the ball when it came to make ExtremeTech aware of it's offerings.
Vorbis is becoming extremely popular, especially for instances when you want 5.1 sound and a low bitrate (it easily outperforms AC3).
Did you read the *whole* article? They state very plainly at the end that "DivX encoded clips tended to have a touch more detail, but also a few more compression artifacts, than the WMV9 video" and that DivX encodes much faster than WMV9. In brief, the only reason for choosing WMV9 over DivX is that it may be included in upcoming consumer devices.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Ok. encoding speed is somewhat important to a few people and bitrate is pretty important to most people but, quality is the most important to almost everyone. From a quality standpoint DivX is the clear winner. But, it still isn't broadcast quality let alone DVD quality.
Aren't there any 'Stock-footage' type DVD's out there that include a license to redistribute they could have used? Or couldn't they at least have tried to get permission for the clips they used?
While they might not have want to try to argue fair use through education or reviewing, they could have found at least one clip they could distribute. Hell, rent a high end digital camera and make one. Tape traffic on a highway, both daytime and nighttime, and you've got a motion video test, or a fountain, or anything.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I'm not quite sure how, but I have an image of divx in a WWI-era helmet, holded up in a trench as bombs explode around it in big pixelated blocks and firing at a giant blue Quicktime logo. War is hell.
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
No RealPlayer?
They didn't use VBR? VBR isn't "entirely" available for quicktime? Does this mean that they didn't want to buy the Sorenson 3 Pro codec?
Also, it seems that they didn't take advantage of various tweaks one can use to improve encoding quality. Maybe your garden variety consumer won't want to tweak encoding parameters for best quality/lowest bitrate, but this review is useless for me.
My preferred application for encoding is Sorenson Squeeze. I don't always have time for extensive tweaking, and Squeeze gives me great results whatever codec I am using. I find I am using this more and more and Cleaner less and less.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Count me in as surprised at how poorly Apple's MPEG-4 implementation did. However, as a very new codec I expect it will improve in time. Or Apple will simply license someone else's codec.
Regardless, Apple has been one of the biggest supporters of MPEG-4, and I thank them for that.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
$5 says that the traffic from slashdot would bring their site down if it had video on it...
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...is which codec is best for encoding pr0n???
it is because XviD would fucking own the competition so badly there is no point in testing it... XviD usually looks just as good as DVD but at 700 megs... I don't know about at lower data-rates but XviD is THE BEST format for DVD to CDR conversion (well the TMD releases are nice cause you fit two on a CD but they look like shit and are always in two parts)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Quicktime is not a format, it is an architecture.
Extremetech REALLY blew it.... even in the apple world quicktime pro is known to be a poor ENCODER. The architecture is not the problem, it is the programs... Those beauitiful trailers that are highly compressed are Qicktime, but they are encode3d in Sorenson 3 using another program... It's called "Cleaner" by CreativeMac...
Extremetech REALLY REALLY blew it... I have never had such bad results when i used quicktime pro, (before i asked around how come I couldnt get the amazing detail of the trailers and was told that they're done in Cleaner)....
again, WMA is a codec, Quicktime is an architecture (thus, useing the Sorenson 3 codec)...man, I am firing off a letter to them for incompetence...
I'd just once like to see ExtremeTech test a series of products that didn't include Microsoft. There are a lot of codecs that perform well that could have been tested in place of WmP9.
Well, seeing how bad ET's iTunes Bad, WMA Good article was, I figure Doom9's codec comparison is better than this.
And yes, Doom9's comparison includes XViD.
Time is a factor, but a small one for me. Quality is the most important and size is a close second. Editing a video takes many hours. Using a faster encoder just because it is faster may compromise my work.
I'm sorry, but some hand-waving, subjective "Hey, this thing kinda looks better than that thing" is not a test. Calling it a "War of the Codecs" is even more ridiculous.
Exactly! You wouldn't test OGG vs. WMV vs AAC with a source of already-compressed MP3, so why do it with videos? Unless people are using their existing video clips, this isn't a good test... and if people are using their video clips, then they should be testing a variety of source (example: my camera produces quicktime clips, not MPEG).
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"For our source material, we turned to DVD movies"
I can imagine the SWAT teams breaking inside extremetech's office: "FREEZEEEE, where's the illegal copy protection circumventing device ?"
Nipple still
Or, how to re-encode your DVDs to make them look just like Comcast Digital Cable!
I like having all my movies and music and shows just a mouse click away. No fondling media, no DVD drives whooshing and movies stuttering halfway throgh because some tiny piece of schmutz got on the precious disc. In order to do this, I don't care at all what 500kbs or 1mbps files look like - The Twins effect alone occupies about 2GB on one of my drives, and I still haven't been able to produce a rip of Natural City that satisfies me even when the last one I tried was nearly 4GB (lots of film grain in that one and I don't care to lose it).
Yes... many of us care about quality. In fact, this is the very reason I rip DVDs - so the programs I enjoy play (more smoothly) from my hard drive.
i find it rather humorous that the only results mentioned on the front page are the results that say Quicktime (and thus Apple) won a certain test (speed). Why didn't they mention that quicktimes mpeg-4 lost horribly, and then say 'to see who won, check the site' or something. oh yea, thats right, it's slashdot, they don't like mentioning when something apple does is bad...
STUPID! YOU'RE SO STUPID!!!
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
I've read -- on Apple's web site a year ago, incidentally -- that they don't use just one codec when producing the beautiful movie trailers on their web site.
Several codecs may be used to produce a single movie trailer, with different codecs being employed where their relative strengths are required: low motion versus action versus bright scenes versus dark scenes.
These guys are WAY more sophisticated in their technique than any home user will ever be.
Lesson: Admire Apple's movie trailers but don't think you're going to reproduce their quality.
--Richard
Also, it would be interesting to see the much-hyped Pixlet codec compared.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Okay, I just encoded some DVD-size video at 1mbit and 500kbit, 1/4 size, in QuickTime MPEG-4 and can barely see any artifacts in either. This dude seriously got some settings wrong in his MPEG-4 encodings, although I don't quite see how that's possible as settings are quality, framerate, keyframes, and data rate (and he said quality was set at best). I'll post some screenies later if I get a chance.
100% correct
The reality of life is that WMV9 is one of the most, if not the most, used codecs around. Therefore it would have been poor testing and irresponsible reporting to have excluded it from the test.
What you suggest would be like a round up of office suites that tested Open Office, WordPerfect, Star Office and KDE Office but, didn't include Microsoft Office. You can't do that and expect to taken seriously.
On the other hand, their result was that WMV9 was the overall winner. My testing is based on what is most important to me. Quality. From a quality perspective I felt that DivX was the clear winner. Of the examples they gave, DivX was clearer and retained more detail than WMV9 in all but a very few cases.
wow, this makes...sense....because the test results showed quicktime was worse than wmv9 and divx, yet you say otherwise...and then you copy and paste from apple and say its better by bolding things...please try to stick to some sort of fact (or at least stay on topic, which in this case is video codec comparrison) instead of trying to start an apple/everyone else flame war.
The article's not very great. First, they convert the MPEG-2 stream to INDEO, then from INDEO to whatever the target is. Fine, but the process isn't a transitive one. Some codecs will not produce as good an input for other codecs, thus biasing the results.
What's particularly suspicious is that Apple's MPEG-4 came out so poorly, though WMV9, and DivX are nothing more than early MPEG-4 codecs. Sorensen3 is the only substantially different algorithm used. And why use MPEG-4? It was originally designed for low-resolution low-bitrate applications (PDAs, cell-phones, etc.)
Why so slow? I do most of my video transcoding under Linux, but they aren't getting much better throughput than I do, and their machine's at least 4 times as fast as mine? I suppose it's got to do with using Indeo (my source is DV), so there's an extra decode step, but it's still quite slow.
I've distributed a number of my own videos in the MPEG-4 format, and don't see the sort of horrible results they demonstrated in their examples -- but then again, perhaps I do preprocessing (quantization, denoising, etc.) that they don't include in their process.
Regardless, my personal experience is that at high or low bitrates, most of the codecs are interchangable. Perhaps you need to fiddle with the encoding parameters, but you can almost always get results close enough to identical as not to matter. It becomes more difficult with mid-range bitrates (2-3Mbps@720x480x29.97) that some codecs show strengths over the others. In that department, I almost always go with MPEG-2 with custom quantization matrices...
They only used Indeo for their codec performance -eg encoding speed - comparisons. Still, as I've said in my above post, they did not need to convert to indeo, and indeo is NOT a typical codec to convert video from. MPEG2 is a much more realistic choice, since that will almost always be the format of the source material. The converting software's ability to decode MPEG2 quickly, in fact, is extremely important. While you can create AVIs in pretty much anything, if QuickTime were to have a shitty MPEG2 codec, it could affect its practicality as a video compression system.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
I mean MPEG-4, despite being open, is NOT a free format. You are required to pay licenses for encoders and decoders. Has XviD payed this? If not, it's technically not legal. That could keep it out of being a serious contender for pro use. I mean I'm betting the MPEG-4 group isn't going to care if some hobbiests are using an unlicensed encoder, but they'll care if pros are.
Does it tell you which codec is best? Maybe but only for recompressing MPEG-2 footage. They *should* have tested against DV output as the standard consumer format, and uncompressed video. Plus looking at snapshots of compressed movies is of limited value, there is a big difference between what detail we can determine through a still image and a moving one. If you were to freeze a tv picture (or look at a captured frame) which includes something moving you would see a combing effect of the interlaced video. It doesn't look like that when you view it though.
Don't you know, EVERYTHING is better on a Mac. Heck, put an Apple logo on your glass, your drink will taste better :).
In all seriousness it comes form the fact that many Mac users toss around apple marketing terms (like Velocity Engine) without understanding what they mean (it's a floating point vector math unit, like 3dnow or SSE2). They just assume it makes things better since that's what the hype claims.
The test was flawed from the beginning. They use DVD's as the source, which are already compressed with a lossy method (MPEG-2). No matter what the ``quality'' of the DVD, you are still going to have artifacts.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
I'd love to see the SNR of a raw -> Xvid encode vs. a raw -> DVD -> Xvid transcode. And raw -> DV (to emulate a DV cam) -> Xvid as well. (DVs 5:1 compression is nothing like that of a DVD)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What I find interesting is the lack of information on how much processing power is needed to decode the content. For instance, I have some QT-Sorrenson-3 video that looks incredible, but requires too much heft to decode on my lowly iBook/500MHz. The MPEG-4 version of the file does not look as good, but the video DOES at least play.
I think it is VERY important to understand the target platform where the content is to be decoded. If it's set-top box, PDA, or mobile phone, then I'd imagine MPEG-4 would be more appropriate (it's also great at streaming). QT-Sorrenson-3 is more targeted towards the desktop.
I have tried using DiVX and Apple's MPEG4 to encode a short video and there are just far too many options to play with. It's virtually impossible for the average person to use any of these and get great results. We need something that will produce excellent results at the click of a button. Until then I'll stick to showing my digital videos saved back to the camera, plugged into a TV, where quality is fantastic.
--- What?
How did you come to that conclusion? According to the article, DivX and WM9 were more or less a tie on quality with advantages and disadvantages on both sides. DivX was faster, so by my figures, that would put DivX slightly ahead.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
It was pokies.
With nipple you get skin
With pokies you get shirt.
All the other problems with this comparison aside, anyone else notice that in the frame comparisons of the various codecs its very often not even the same frame? Look at the first comparison from Matrix, in the WMV9 frame neo's arm is quite definately in a completely different position. This seems extremely sloppy in my opinion. Seriously, if people want a proper codec comparison they should go to doom9.net
'Matrix Reloaded', no matter what codec used, still sucked.
Parent clearly did not read the article, however he may have clicked on a couple of the pictures to draw his conclusion.
He "hates sites like" this, and uses examples why that appear nowhere on the page. He compares it to flamewars that have nothing to do with the source material. For this, he is currently ranked at Score 5.
Parent: read the text of the article, this was hardly a prejudiced review. It was in-depth and analytical, and gave good reasons to choose (or not choose) each codec, based on quality, speed, and cost.
And then they proceed to demonstrate with clips from three action movies and an animated movie? They would have been better off using poorly-lit birthday footage with a hand-held camera, or someone taping Fido drink from the toilet. No one's going to have footage like the "burly brawl," so I'm not sure how valuable this article is.
The other codec missing from this test is real media. Now I know I know, "It's the Devil" but I've seen some pretty good results and now with real alternative around it's not too bad.
I mean I can fit 5 seasons of Daria on a cd and it's watchable. And there is tonnes of old anime kicking around in it.
I didn't read the article, but after looking at the chart, it is clear that Monsters, Inc. clearly beat out those other movies. It's over 4x faster than Spiderman.
... to support a foregone conclusion.
Let me get this straight:
Divx5 and WMA9 and QT are very close in quality, they actually state that they basically can't tell the difference between Divx5 and WMA9, QT is 2x faster to render on Microsoft/x86 hardware than WMA, Divx5 is pretty speedy, while WMA9 was slowest of them all; and they conclude solely for compatibility on future hardware (like that's been written in stone) that everyone should use WMA9, and forget about the rest.
Gotta Love Ziff-Davis publishing. They give you the straight goods every time. Riiiiiight.
in spiderman.
Kirsten Dunst's wet t-shirt scene.
They definitely should've used something with less lossy compression.
Heck, if I were doing this comparison I'd set up an avs script, or use huffyuv for lossless compression.
I know it is not the topic, but is anyone aware of any same type of comparison with audio codecs ? I mean, if someone encodes a clip, it is humanly possible to compare two videos / pictures and have an overall opinion. But i think that it is far less simple with audio media, as i have difficulties to "feel" the differences between two audio streams, and of course i cannot compare then step by step like still images ;)
This thing is at +5? VERY overrated. give it -2 Overrated in fact.
For Hi-def, wm9 is probably better than XviD. Different codecs work better at different bit rates and qualities in many cases. Very few people use XviD for hi-def video. If you don't believe me, go to www.avsforum.com. They love wm9, and the know their stuff. Don't think xvid is always better than wm9.
If you always encode to 650MB or 1300MB/Movie, then yes.
But if you want to use disk space efficiently, you get too big file sizes for easily encoded movies and too bad quality for hard encoded movies.
IMO, nothing beats quality based encoding, ie. you specify a quality setting and the movie will have whatever size is needed for that quality.
As soon as the CD dies as the major storage for movies (being replaced either by hard-disk or DVD), we will hopefully see more focus on quality-based encoding and less on bitrate-based, because it's pointless.
each movie was encoded in 500KB and 1MB bitrates.
/metric(b!=B)=true
Wow. That's 4 megabits and to 8 megabits. That's pretty extreme, don't you think?
This shootout is retarded in so many ways. For example, I've been dying to know how each codec performs when asked to encode black bars.
i replaced my cd burner with dvd burner i'm not interested in mpeg 4 codecs anymore :-) but before that xvid was and still is my favorite. beats other codecs hands down.
a thread in the forum has just been started to talk about the comparison. There were only a couple posts when I linked to it, but I'm sure there'll be more interesting critiques later.
Now, can someone please remind me what the availability of DivX source code is?
First off, divx (being mpeg4) is superior to dvd (mpeg 2). It's just that when you use a dvd and RE-ENCODE it your dealing with another generation so at best you'll just meet the quality of the dvd.
And from a quality standpoint most people agree XVID is the winner. And for a little background divx was open at one time and then after getting lots of help from people closed it up. A team formed that took the last open copy and made XVID (divx spelled backwards) which a lot of people believe surpassed DIVX.
So on principle alone I will not use DIVX. It's dead to me. But they are all mpeg4 implentations and as long as they keep in compilance I'll stick to xvid. And that's what I want out of my next gen dvd player, mpeg4 playback. Not wm9, not qt (never will touch it because of their crap player, and even if you think their player is the cat's ass, I hate my video being locked into one player, so personally I wish qt would just die).
These Indeo 5.1 encoded master clips are virtually identical to the original MPEG-2 video on the DVD...
they used Indeo codec... if uncompressed uses too much space all sources must be compressed with Huffyuv. now that would be a identical master clip. simple as that.
The bigger question is how taking a compressed format (MPEG2) compressing it further (Indeo) and using that as a source is a good test. Each different type of video compression create artifacts that are unique to that algorithm. When you re-encode with a different codec you can have distortion that is amplified by the *beating* of the algorithms. Different codec's will react in different ways to source that has a specific kind of distortion.
To make a comparison of codec's based on an MPEG2 compressed source is justifiable from the standpoint that we are likely to be ripping DVD's. However, I very much doubt that we will rip down to an interstitial Indeo format before doing the final compression. The fact that they didn't separate the compression time test's from the compression quality tests is suspect. They say they didn't want to contaminate the test with disk access, but disk access times would have been the same for all of the codecs and would have modeled real user usage.
I would not be surprised that SV3 and MPEG-4 have a bad interaction with Indeo compression, or at least Indeo compressed MPEG2. They should have used the original MPEG2 source at a minimum, and ideally uncompressed source.
Which CODECs are easier to do actual editing with. Heavy compression means that it usually doesn't scrub well, if at all. I usually edit in DV, but the space it needs is pretty large.
Sorry, but I don't want to buy a new computer every 6 months to keep playing WMV. Files are nice and small, quality is good, but framerate sucks nuts unless you have a massively fast computer. What a waste.
DivX is better in this regard, but not as good as QT. I have a huge pipe, I don't care about download speed.
Not only that, people who care about quality ALWAYS encode DivX in 2-pass (or emore). The review only used DivX 1-pass.
Except you will be stuck with dumb-as-hell one button, no scroll button mouse.
XviD is not "just as good as DVD but at 700 megs". Be reasonable. XviD, DivX and QT/MPEG4 are actually close relatives, they all "speak" MPEG4 "dialects".
I played with a lot of different codecs, including MPEG4-like mutants such as DivX, XviD, ffmpeg, etc. If i limit myself just at comparing DivX and Xvid, then:
- XviD is slightly faster than DivX, all else being equal
- XviD has slightly better quality than DivX, all else being equal, but it's an extremely close call (and sometimes the opposite is true)
So, in the Extremetech benchmark, if you replace DivX with XviD, it would fare slightly better overall. But definitely nothing as ridiculous as "owning the competition".
Facts please, not emotional knee-jerk reactions. Thank you.
Thanks to the hard work of the Xine team, i can do the same, but using more front-ends and a more flexible architecture.
http://xinehq.de/
It is important to remember, that for most purposes all of the codecs they tests except Quicktime/Sorenson are actually MPEG4. I don't know if WMP9 is standards-compliant, but it is based on MPEG4 technology. DivX *is* MPEG4, with many of the optional features implemented. And of course Quicktime/MPEG4 is too.
So except for Sorenson, and the differences in packing technology (WMP, DivX, and Quicktime use different container formats), this is a comparison of 3 different MPEG4 implementations. This isn't really a codec shootout--it is an implementation shootout. Not that they included the best MPEG4 implementation available, XVid, but what do you expect from Ziff-Davis.
Really, this just proves that MPEG4 is a really good standard. With its impressive features (double indirect frames, global motion compensation, quarter-pel interpolation, improved motion vector compression, and object based decomposition), there really isn't much more to do without making major changes in how things are done. Just about the only refinement I can think of would be to move from DCT-based entropy coding to a wavelet-based entropy coding, like the move from JPEG to JPEG2000. That would help the codec scale to higher resolutions and lower bitrates more gracefully, but in the common case wouldn't gain much.
I am very suprised that the Sorenson ended up so bad. Generally when you watch Soreneson encoded stuff it is very very clean... IE most movie trailers. I remember the very first few of Sorenson on an apple 8.5 cd with a Bare Naked Ladies video, we blew that thing up and stop framed and found almost no artification. Generally I use sorenson, and end up with much better results.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
...it occurs to me that they should have tested something like South Park the movie or a Family Guy episode too, because solid blocks of color (such as in cartoon animation) are handled in different ways by different codecs. Monsters Inc was a good idea, but they need toons!
Frankly, I think the test material was of questionable value.
Starting off with material recovered from a lossy storage platform makes no sense at all. All you'll be doing is compounding the MPEG-2 artifacts (blockiness, mosquito noise, dirty windows, wavy noise, shadow definition, etc.) with those of the new encoding.
The only way I would accept a test of codecs is if a non-compressed (or uncompressed from a lossless storage platform) original were used in all the encodings.
What they've done would be like my taking a jpeg and trying to figure out which secondary image compression format is best, bitmap, gif, or png. Pointless.
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Where is XVid, RV10, VP6?
They might as well not have published the article.
-N
The article looks at encoding at low and medium bit rates because the idea is to see ini what format you should save video so you can send it by email or on a cd to grandma. Neither of which you are likely to do with clips from Monsters, Inc. (animation) or a action SF film. What you might do with a hollywood movie is back it up to a DVD+/-R for archivial purposes - in which case you want tests of high bit rates.
They should shoot their own video of household stuff - baby walking, baseball game, etc. and tested that.
Seeing as Quicktime movie trailers have been using Sorenson Video (1, 2 and 3) for video since about the time that trailers for The Phantom Menace were coming out, I'm wondering if you somehow remembered the page wrong. I do know that to get that kind of quality out of Sorenson needs the Pro version of the codec (which gives you bidirectional coding, VBR and other goodies) and an encoder that actually supports 2-pass VBR properly (Cleaner comes to mind).
I can't help but think that given the same sort of quality source material that Apple has, home users could get that kind of quality with a little know-how and the right tools. AviSynth, for example, has tons of fantastic user-created filters for cleaning up less-than-ideal video and removing noise. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the main thing I've noticed about successive versions of Sorenson is that it seems to be better about not wasting bits compressing background noise in places with little motion. (This comes, of course, from years of diligent trailer-watching.)
After all, the red is supposed to indicate the slowest encoder, and the green is supposed to indicate the fastest encoder. And if the following text is true...
Not quite one click, but AutoGK is pretty easy and has good documentation.
AutoGK site
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Anyone know how the WMV and DivX file sizes compared?
From the article:
QT 6.5-MPEG-4:Pros: Decent image quality
Cons: Horrible image quality
What gives? I guess it could be alluding to the tradeoff between the two, but it seems like an odd thing to say.
Mole? 4? Cars?
I know this was strictly about quality - but i think its very shortsighted to miss some of the key features WHY people like Quicktime... and its not always about the quality of watching ripped DVDs.
For example - I don't see anywhere where it points out that Quicktime and Divx are by far the most DRM-less codecs out there. WMP9 can stick you up the ass if you're not careful. Plus, there are plenty of times that WMP9 will refuse to operate properly with multi=monitor setups (my friend's brand new ThinkPad, for example, refuses to play over the external VGA port....)
i also don't see any mention of the ability to cut/copy/paste with the built-in default players as a comparison tool. How many times have you wanted just a sliver of a movie to playback - ro to have the ability to quickly convert it to DV to put onto a workflow with some other editing? Even the average goofball making iMovies wants to do that all the time - but is 100% prevented from doing that with WMP9
While the quality of QT is obviously lacking - i'll use it EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK because its far more powerful for everyday use, and much more free of DRM issues.
this would explain, of course - Hollywood's facination with it - its got great quality while sacrificing little things... like fair use.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
the thinkpad thing is a primary-display / secondary-display thing. the video overlay only works on the primary display. you need to set your external vga to the primary display, and make the built-in LCD secondary display. then your video will play.
Aside from not posting their encoding settings, they didn't even include the fully featured Sorenson Pro, which includes better features such as bidirectional prediction. They also didn't include the best of breed On2 Technologies VP6. That's like having a "race of the speedsters" without a Ferrari. WTF?
Apple's is the best, of course.
Don't bother to read that article, you know Steve and the boys have come up with the best solution, as always.
I would have thought that cross platform, mpeg-4/2 should be at least as supported as quicktime.
they did NOT give proper credit to quicktime sorensen for its obviously superior color fidelity throughout.
From the summary for Quicktime MPEG-4:
Pros: Inexpensive, fast encoding speed, decent image quality
Cons: Horrible image quality
In any case, basically their findings were that DivX and WMV are about the same quality, with the Quicktime codecs significantly worse in many tests. Encoding speed was the reverse, with Quicktime being faster. But from reading other comments, there are more flaws with this article...
Not to sound antiquated (sp?), but I wonder why people never consider MPG-1 for video? Sure, if you're going for a full DVD rip, go with a better "compression ratio" codec like MPEG-4, but for shorter works, around 30 minutes or less, I find that MPG-1 looks EXCELLENT and weighs in at an acceptable size, especially when VBR is switched on.
The reason I rely on MPG-1 is I want my animations / video to be playable on ANY machine -- PC, MAC, *nix -- without any extra installs necessary (thus more likely to be seen by others.)
*Shrug* I think they should have tested FAR more codecs than just 4... that seems quite limited and close-minded. Not to mention the Indeo conversion to boot!
Jds
Different encoders are of different qualities (think lame vs. bladeenc vs. l3enc - all mp3 encoders, but all have different output quality). What they are really comparing is specific implementations of encoder and decoder.
The quality of the decoder is critical. Windows Media 9 has substantial post-processing of the decoded content, which reduces blockiness and other artefacts. It is probable that the MPEG-4 decoder is not using these postfilters, so it looks nasty when played back, just as, if you remove the postfilters from WM9, it looks horrible at low bitrates.
The only way to compare the codecs fairly is to use multiple implementations of both encoder and decoder, and deactivate all postfilters. Then take the best implemetation of each codec for comparsion. This will give a much better indication of how good the codecs are. Anything short of this is, at best, misleading.
Another note about the article is the selection of clips. When comparing video codecs, it is worthwhile having different types of content. The action sequences chosen are good examples, but one of them would be enough. The Monsters Inc clip is also worthwhile (to compare colour fidelity and sharpness), but a sport clip should be included (basketball is good because of the polished floors and seas of faces in the crowd) as well as traditional animation, such as The Simpsons. Animation is actually quite hard to encode.
Unfortunately, I am yet to see a particularly good comparison of video codecs outside where I work (Telstra Research Labs). Unfortunately the work done there cannot be shared with Slashdot.
There might be another one if someone would help me fix and finish it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
I mean, after all....they have the best codec out there and would be on top of the world if Microsoft weren't holding them down. Right? Guys? Hellooooooo......
Just to clarify, Quicktime is a media architecture, not a file format or a codec.
This misunderstanding doesn't invalidate your argument, although I would disagree with you about MPEG-4. I've gotten good results with it, sometimes even great results.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I believe Compressor is what Apple recommends for real encoding needs.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
OK, so they may have had a little trouble with cut-and-paste mistakes. But I still found it amusing that they contradicted themselves in their summary blurb.
I also agree with several other people's comments: These results seem oddly skewed against the Quicktime/MPEG-4 codec. I know that Apple's MPEG-4 codec isn't as mature as some of the other Quicktime components, but I can't help but feel that the author of the article missed some important settings when using this codec. That another Slashdot reader was able to get excellent results with Apple's MPEG-4 codec makes me want to call shenanigans too. Or perhaps the ExtremeTech article author's methodology introduced enough noise to the source video (converting from DVD to Indeo) that it caused the MPEG-4 codec to choke?
From the QuickTime summary:
Pros: decent image quality
Cons: Horrible image quality
Mod parent up.
He's right about introducing more artifacts with each encode. If you wanted to get the best compression and did not care about quality, you would run your source material through multiple codecs. As each artifact the prior codec produced will get worse and worse as the codec tries to implement its method of saving space.
It's a bad idea to test the quality of a codec when they put each one at a disadvantage because they use ALREADY COMPRESSED SOURCE MATERIAL, not to mention they decided to run it through another codec (Indeo) before they finally decided to the "test quality" of the codecs in question. Using the Indeo codec only compounded the problem, even if it was at a high bitrate, its still being compressed again.
I wish these authors would understand that you don't do quality comparisons of video codecs with already compressed source material, its just WRONG.
This "comparison" was a waste of time because of their test methods.
7 rupees a day.
right?
This 'shootout' deserves no credence.
1- Starting with 6Mbps MPEG is *BROKEN*. You are encoding artifacts, even if you can't see them. The only meaningful shootout is to use uncompressed SD which is 270 Mbps. (or HD if you want to get really serious). Codecs see artifacts as detail and waste bits trying to reproduce them. Starting with a source that's natively 270 Mbps and has been compressed to 6mbps (and VBR at that but that's another story) *will* introduce artifacts.
No professional would use a DVD as a source and an amateur would get worse results from even higher bitrate source materials that were shot/edited/color-corrected poorly. Garbage in/Garbage Out. The only reason the encoded hollywood DVD's look acceptable at all is the sources THEY were encoded from were expertly shot, edited, color corrected and tele-cine'd.
2- The Sorenson 3 codec as included in the free QuickTime download (yes free... you don't need QT Pro to export QuickTime, any QuickTime application can expose the export codec) is not capable of 2-pass VBR. The difference in quality using the pro version of the Sorenson codec with VBR (and having a clue) is enormous.
The shootout is not a shootout of codecs. It's a shootout of idiot presets using iffy source material. It's a shootout of tools and approaches appropriate for amateurs.
It completely ignores architectural differences between the formats which, again, for anyone with real content production goals. QuickTime is a vastly richer and more flexible architecture. (and no I'm not on Apple's payroll)
-A.C.
The codec itself is neutral from any copy protection mechanism, or you just like to yell "DRM" for some cheap mod points.
Don't forget they don't even use the same frames for the different comparison shots.
Why are the preview pictures in jpeg?
Compressed video file snapshot + More compression from jpeg = even worse looking!
I love this comparasion.
Okay, so I AM the world's leading expert on video compression codecs and formats (no, really, I am). I cover the same ground in my book, and in a series of articles for DV magazine over the last five years. So I'm pretty picky on this kind of things. But these guys couldn't compress themselves out of a wet paper bag.
Some fundamental errors:
They're using MPEG-2 sources, which are already highly compressed (this has been amply covered by other posters).
They talk about converting to an "uncompressed" AVI, but never specify which flavor of uncompressed. They should have used a lossless codec that uses the native Y'CbCr color space of video, like Huffyuv. They way they just said "uncompressed" suggests they used the AVI "None" codec, which is uncompressed RGB. This causes two lossly color space conversions - one from the Y'CbCr of the source to RGB, and then back to Y'CbCr in the delivery codec.
They used Indeo 5.1 as their intermediate codec. This is terrible. Indeo uses what's called YUV-9 sampling. There is only one measurement of color per 4x4 block of pixels. This throws away 75% of the color information from the DVD (which uses 4:2:0 sampling, with 2x2 blocks), before it even touches a codec. And this results in very ugly blocks whenever there are highly saturated regions with sharp contrast. So, all the output is going to look highly compressed when rendered from these intermediates, even if further compression is lossless. Look at the Spider Man test frame for an example. Notice the red blooming around the shoulders of the vocalist. And the color everywhere is very muddled. Indeo can also be slow to decode, unless it was encoded with all keyframes. And how slow it is to decode will vary with the tool, which probably added measurable error to their encoding time measurements.
They don't know the difference between Sorenson Video 3, which comes free with QuickTime, and Sorenson Video 3.3 Professional, which you have to pay for and is what Apple uses for their movie trailers. With the Pro version, critical features like B-frames and 2-pass VBR are available.
Apple's MPEG-4 encoder isn't very good - 1-pass only, tuned for speed more than quality. A file with the exact same compatibility could be made with Squeeze, Compression Master, Envivio, etcetera with MUCH better quality. And the Divx MPEG-4 codec is, of course, also MPEG-4.
They didn't use 2-pass encoding! No quality-concious encoder would ever put content on spinning disc without using 2-pass. And they didn't mention most of the other encoding settings they used, which by context I'd guess were basic defaults.
That's from an initial skim. If I spent more time with the article.
In summary, these guys spent hours and hours analyzing the results of tests, where they would have been WAY better off spending an hour asking someone who knew anything about video compression how to administer this kind of test.
Oddly enough, their results are vaguely like you'd expect - WMV9 and DivX do well, Sorenson less so, and Apple MPEG-4 at the rear. Done properly, I imagine WMV9 would have had a slight lead, and Sorenson 3 Pro would have been a lot closer to DivX. And no one uses Apple's MPEG-4 codec for content distribution. QuickTime's decoder is fine, so folks would use a professional-grade MPEG-4 encoder instead.
My video compression blog
VP4? I don't believe that was ever released. I had a review copy of it, but they quickly superseded it with VP5.
VP3 was the one that was open-souces, and is used as the basis of Ogg Theora.
The current On2 codec is VP6, which is free for personal use.
My video compression blog
The article you're thinking of said that they encode different segments with different parameters, but they exclusively use Sorenson Video 3 Pro for the video codec.
Audio codec is the ancient QDesign Music 2 Pro, instead of the much better, and Apple-savvy AAC-LC. I don't know why.
I teach a week-long intensive compression seminar at Stanford each summer, and the students can do about as well after that week. Compression isn't THAT hard - it's more about not getting any one thing wrong than having to do lots of hard things right.
Beyond the skill of the compressionists, the other thing Apple has going for them is perfect quality uncompressed source.
My video compression blog
Well, that's their conclusion. But given that they didn't publish the settings for either compression, I'm rather confident that they used sub-optimal settings in both cases.
Divx can be decent, but assuming equally competent compressions, WMV9 should come out measurably better.
Also, none of this says much of anything about consumer devices. Divx supports a subset of codec features at HD resolutions, and the flavor of WMV9 the DVD Forum is talking about using (the SMPTE VC-9 submission), has features that aren't in what they tested. Plus consumer media wouldn't ever use bitrates this low.
My video compression blog
WMV9 isn't MPEG-4 derived. MS MPEG-4v3 was, but that forked into WMV7 years ago. WMV9 is quite different than MPEG-4 now.
QuickTime encodes and decodes Simple Profile MPEG-4
DivX did Simple in V4, and V5 added support for Advanced Simple.
Most of this will be moot soon, since the MPEG-4 Part 10/AVC/H.264 codec is way better than the old Simple or Advanced Simple, and will rapidly replace the old versions in the next couple of years.
My video compression blog
Xvid and 3ivx get mentioned many posts further down, but no one says anything about ogg!!! From my limited experience, it has amazing quality and the greatest advantage over xvid and that damnd WMV9 is that it is instantly seekable. No lag while xvid thinks and no buffering by windows. I personally use media player classic for my WMV's & get instant seeking, but his target audience doesn't.
All hail ogg!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! CODECS!
Seriously, they drive me mad. Everyone's got their own codec that they think is the best. I understand that they have different features and draw backs. But could we not just decide on using a hand full (each one focusing on a different niche). I'd like to see all players be able to use all codecs. I'd like to not have to download a codec for every movie. What's even more frustrating is when you download the codec and it still doesn't work.
So why don't we just get a few codecs working properly for everbody. Honestly, I am by no means a codec buff and I don't think you should have to be just to watch video. C'mon people, who cares if your codec is particularly better in this department or that. I just want to watch video with decent compression and quality.
That's my 2 cents.
... but new ffdshow has been released quite recently (I got it only 2 days ago). Now VFW interface and audio decoding(!) are included. I have already got used to volume normalizing (yahoo!!! :-)
All of the codecs were tested in CBR mode, so the comparison was fair. Putting DivX in VBR would give it an unfair advantage.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
I spent hours trying to figure out why my Windows Video 9 clip wouldn't play on some other person's machine... I eventually found that Windows Media Player 8 wouldn't play v9 video format clips. (It did play the v9 audio.) I tried going to some other famous video sites to see what they do and it and seems like the workaround is to encode the clip as Windows Video 8. Know anything about this?
Yep. I've had a web-site redesign in progress for ages now. It should be done in a few weeks, I keep telling myself.
My video compression blog
YOU are so stupid you do not even undrestand how great MAC IS until you have tried Mac!!! But if you buy Mac OS X you will see what I mean for sure. And then you will say sorry for being a fool
Reguarding this problem you might like to try newer video drivers, we had a problem exactly the same as this but with Compaq Armada m700's. The problem was that we were using default XP drivers, not the newer ones from Compaq. Upgrading fixed this problem
OGM and Matroska are containers for... what? XviD, DivX, WMV, mpeg (i.e. x/s/k/m/vcd) are all codecs... and then something like avi, wmv or mpg gets slapped onto the end. I guess i don't understand why using the same video codec, but different containers, would make for smaller/better/faster video files.
Confusions aside, i think the potential downfall of matroska is the extension. It might seem stoopid, but that "k" in the middle slows you down. mks and mkv just don't flow nicely. Yes its a shallow observation to make, but try calling up a friend and talking about MKV's. The illiterate masses don't know and don't care.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!