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H.264 and VP8 Compared
TheReal_sabret00the writes with a snippet from StreamingMedia.com: "VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself."
Once again someone is comparing a codec to H264 using some small as hell resolution.
Welcome to 2010, if it's not encoded at 1080p nobody cares.
On a cell phone, that's not true.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And there are a few hundred million cell phones out there that support H.264 but not VP8, so good luck taking over that market any time soon.
VP8 will need to prove itself on the desktop where software decoders are possible before it's going to get any traction in embedded devices...
In most of the civilized world there's no such thing as software patents
Yeah, most of the civilized world except the US, EU, UK, Japan, South Korea, and others...
And there is no point in pretending software is not patentable in the EU - precedent has LONG been established that software solving a "technical" problem as opposed to a "business process" is patentable. Video and audio codecs are already among those issued. (a big part of that is that codecs are not necessarily "software" patents, in that they are fairly straightforward algorithms that can be implemented in "hardware"/firmware/etc as well as software).
Feel free to count the number of countries in this list, but I think it's over 25... http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf
Neither of these allow software patents (despite what the European Patent Office might tell you). Germany does unfornatually but they're not the EU in the same way the UK isn't.
Come on. H264 fan boys use such a low bitrate for shootouts that you are often comparing crap with shit. I don't care how good that shit looks compared to crap. Its still crap and shit.
By the time you get up to bitrate/resolutions combination that matter (ie *are* HD, rather than just HD pixel count), the difference in all codecs are much smaller.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
None of the comparisons are of exactly the same frame. 3 of the 6 images have different times in the corner.
I suspect the writer selected frames so H.264 won, but gave VP8 one win at the end to not seem biased.
Also his 'standard SD encoding test file that I've been using for years' would also be a source of suspicion. It is possible that his source file is already in a format that encodes better into H.264 than it does into VP8. And has already been mentioned here the resolution of the source is quite low for todays HD broadband world...
He used Sorenson Media to encode the files. In all probability they may be just better at setting some of the encoding parameters in the codec they have had longer...
And that was just a quick look. There are possibly other flaws that I haven't noticed yet.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Who in their right mind would compare codec quality by encoding screenshots in a lossy image format??? To add insult to injury, the GIF image files in the article have a .jpg extension.
This article, and the person who wrote it, are worse than useless.
Your analysis of my post belongs in left field. I never stated any of the straw man assertions you raised.
I never stated our current system might not fail. I never stated that the current western system is the best humanity will discover.
Frankly, I don't even understand how you could glean that from reading my post. Please read the initial post that I was responding to, then read my post and understand it was in response to that.
Afterwards, perhaps a cold martini and some reflection, and you'll understand my points (and cease making up things which I did not say or imply, so that you can refute them).