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Comparing Codecs for 2004
MunchMunch writes "Popular encoding/guide/news site doom9.org has just put up its codec shoot-out for 2004, comparing 3ivx 5.0, Divx Fusion 5.9 (prerelease 6.0), Nero Digital Main Profile and High Profile, RealVideo 10, On2 VP6, VideoSoft's VSS, Xvid 1.0, MS's WMV9 and, last, newcomer Jomingo's HDX4. The comparison covers the speed, accuracy, target-file-size-adherence and other aspects of the codecs -- but also lets you compare yourself via high- and low-bandwidth framegrabs of each codec with a nice zoomable image-swap script."
I'm an Amiga user, where is FLC you incensitive clod?
H.264 is MPEG-4 Advanced Codec (AVC). Some AVC codecs are included in the article, the Nero Digital and HP4X one's in particular.
From a quite-newbie point of view: is there a reason why Ogg Theora isn't included? Given the quality and increasing popularity of Vorbis, I would have expected at least a mention. And it would have been interesting to know its state relative to the others.
I realize it's not available yet, Huh? You can get source code of the reference hode, or zillions of commercial implementations
Overall, the progress is just astounding. When I compare clips of say movies from 3 years ago to ones you can find now, the file sizes have remained the same but the quality of both video and audio have gone way up. I don't know much about video codecs but I do recall back then there still being MPEG 4 in the game, so maybe it's more about modern tweaks?
x264 is a free (GPL) implementation done by one of the French guys of the videolan team (who made the VLC player). ./configure options).
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http://www.videolan.org/x264.html
MPlayer-pre6 now supports it. You just need to compile the x264 codec, and compile MPlayer with the x264 libraries linked (see
I tried it, it is very promising.
Apparently it also works with transcode and has a Win32 version too.
See alsothis thread about using mencoder and x264:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=83
No, they don't meet the processing requirements. "Just as mp3(and similar) is good enough to listen" - Mp3 files are small enough that even when encoded at a high bitrate, you can download a file reasonably fast. Audio quality is also alot more subjective to the listener then video is. Anyone can take a video and pause it and point out all the things that don't look quite right, something that can't be done with an MP3. Also since you know what a video is "supposed" to look like, you notice the errors more. Those stairs aren't blurry in real life, why are they in the movie? Same for faces, rain and other objects. Video codec's will always be worked on and updated, as higher quality video is demanded, sizes get larger and larger and more unworkable. When you have a large HDTV, do you really want to watch a divx video with blocky motion artifacts?
For those too lazy to click the above link, here's the content of the first post:
"I think a new thread is a more fitting place to discuss about the Snow codec. :) If someone wouldn't know what is it, it's an experimental wavelet codec made by the ffmpeg developers, which borrows a lot of tools from h.264, and while it's still early in the development, it's already giving very good results, far surpasses other wavelet codecs (rududu, dirac) and imho Xvid too, quality-wise. Unfortunately it's only usable with mplayer/mencoder right now, but i think the next ffdshow will include it, so the testing will be more easier. [Update: The latest ffdshow build provided by Celtic_druid have Snow support]
I've played with the settings, and so far this command-line gives the best result:
code:mencoder in.avi -o out.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=snow:vstrict=-1:vqscale=3:qpel:v4mv:cmp=1:s ubcmp=1:mbcmp=1:pred=1
This gives ~600-800 kbps, depending on the source, and the quality is excellent imo.
vqscale is the quantizer, if it's not included it in the command line, Snow will compress losslessly.
So far my opinion about the different settings: qpel always increases the quality - recommended v4mv - i would only recommended it at lower quantizers (max 4-5), above that the stronger artifacts it causes like ringing can hurt the quality xxxcmp=1 (using SSE comparison method instead of SAD) slows down the encoding, but prevents the color mismatches, which can occur otherwise (anyone who tried rududu codec can remember to that). using pred=1 or 2 (different wavelet functions instead of the default) can increase the quality, but these make the encoding (and pred=2 the decoding too) much slower."
Wavelet-based encoding definitely sounds like a great idea. It's only too bad that it isn't universally usable (it can't compress certain images well, either), and requires a fast CPU. At least it gives that Athlon 64 3500+ you just got something to do :)
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Thank you for today's example of Apple fanboy hating curmudgeonliness.
Fanboy or not, he gave useful information: H.264 does indeed have more industry credibility than the list of toy codecs who main use is to swap pirated TV shows on the eDonkey network.
And the fact that you've started to get modded up informative is what gives Slashdot a bad taste in the mouth.
Seriously, this place is looking more like comp.sys.advocacy.* every day...
What you are saying is that 640 kB should be enough for everyone, or that since we have Microsoft Word we have reached a level of acceptability...
This is not so, since new codecs do so much more than conserve bandwidth (which is in itself a good purpose, considering the Slashdot effect and other congestions that will always occur on tah intarweb). Some of them DO have better quality per se than MPEG-2, and some of them DO scale enormously much better. MPEG-4 was developed for these and other reasons, and there is a tremendous need for such a codec, not least from a wireless perspecive.
Furthermore, it would be desirable to have a codec that can handle as many things as possible, rather than relying on a bunch of different codecs for different purposes.
Finally, I believe in standards rather than proprietary formats and codecs. DivX is fine, but it is a bastardized version of MPEG-4, and there are also many different implementations. Most of them generate errors in VLC, whereas I have yet to see a failing MPEG-4 video.
There are also the aspects of cross platform implementation (forget WMV9), simplicity, scalability and ingenuity in the architecture (why Quicktime was chosen as the MPEG-4 file architecture), and industry support (everyone but Redmond City supports MPEG-4). There.
NeroDigital was declared the overall winner, not XviD. XviD had the best quality versus encoding speed. TFA specically says
Finally, XviD, one year after taking the crown, had to give it back. It would've won again, if it were not for ateme's AVC codecs. So, if you make DVD backups now that need to work on a standalone or slower machine, XviD is still a very good option, but I guess we'll see AVC capable decoder chips in 2005.
and
Looking at the encoding speed table, this was an easy pick: XviD clearly delivers the best quality per FPS and shows that high speed is not detrimental to quality at all. Also, ateme's Main Profile encoder delivered a good 31.40 fps, which is very respectable for an AVC codec, and thus it earned the 2nd place in this category.
I love my $60 Philips DVP 642 Divx/Xvid stand-alone DVD Player:= 2598455 0 204SWE
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20465
http://walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
When they make a $60 DVD player for other codecs than MPEG2/MPEG4 I'll be interested. Until then, why bother if something is a little bit better? A WMV9 DVD player would probably be another $50 and not worth it (not that they even exist right now).