Comparing Codecs for 2004 233
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."
Winner (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Winner (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of those sound codec tests where vorbis wasnt present
Re:Winner (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Winner (Score:2)
Re:Winner (Score:3, Insightful)
MPEG1
MPEG2
MPEG4
MSMPEG4 V1
MSMPEG4 V2
MSMPEG4 V3
WMV7
WMV8
H.261
H.263(+)
MJPEG
Lossless MJPEG
DV
Huff YUV
FFmpeg Video 1
FFmpeg Snow
Asus v1
Asus v2
Sorenson Video 1
FLV
ZLIB
Those are the video codecs that libavcodec [sourceforge.net] currently implements an encoder for.
It sounds like you've confused the codecs with specific implementations of those codecs.
Re:Winner (Score:5, Informative)
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.
H.264 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Informative)
(HP4X has something to do with calculators from HP.)
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Informative)
Talking about Apple's implementation... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:H.264 (Score:3, Informative)
hint: some of these toy codecs ARE h.264/avc.
Re:H.264 (Score:2, Informative)
Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Ultra high bandwidth PNG? (Score:3, Informative)
It may not seem much, but it adds up. Sometimes you can reduce the bit depth (for gray scale), make a palette (for drawings and charts that don't need 64 bits of color depth), and reduce resolution. Some more tricks are at
What no FLC? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What no FLC? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What no FLC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What no FLC? (Score:2)
And they'd damned well better fit on an 880K floppy!
Re:What no FLC? (Score:2)
Dunno. I just encode them by hand (draw them with the mouse) using Deluxe Paint III.
Which is great if you don't mind Keanu Reeves in Matrix Revolutions looking like a deformed pygmy that was attacked with a rake.
On the other hand, 'encoding' this way improves the quality of the acting in MR...
Re:Aegis Animator is far superior (Score:2)
If so, I agree with you, but for a different reason; the CDTV had a really attractive boot screen (with spinning 'CDTV' logo) and CD-playing software; both of which were far nicer (and easier to use) than the crappy Playstation (PS1) graphics for the same things.
I think he complained about what they did to them on the CD32 (looks like they took the same graphics and modified them, though I've never used the CD32 much; anyway, they aren't as good). H
Re:What no FLC? (Score:2)
On the Amiga its native format was ANIM, and CDXL (cdxl was a method of doing full motion movies with the cdtv and cd32).
Re:What no FLC? (Score:2)
snow is better and mplayer supports it now! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:snow is better and mplayer supports it now! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:snow is better and mplayer supports it now! (Score:3, Informative)
but i dont have an account so this will be buried at score 0.
i cant believe nobody on slashdot knows of this great codec. which as i said is supported by mencoder/mplayer now!
Re:nobody seems to have heard of this codec (Score:5, Interesting)
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 :)
Re:nobody seems to have heard of this codec (Score:3, Interesting)
I was trying to encode the freedom downtime dvd with it [it was handy] and it segfaulted on the first frame.
In fact the mplayer crew largely ignore x86_64 alltogether which pisses me off as several months ago I offered shell accounts on my 64-bit box just so they could actually get to adding proper support.
For instance, the x86_64 has MMX, 3dNOW and SSE [1 and 2] NONE of which a stock build of mplayer [up to pre6] will use.
Re:nobody seems to have heard of this codec (Score:3, Funny)
I was trying to encode the DavesLanParty dvd with it [it was handy] and it segfaulted on the first frame.
In fact the mplayer crew largely ignore Atari alltogether which pisses me off as several months ago I offered shell accounts on my STE box (8mhz 4M) just so they could actually get to adding proper support !.
For instance, the STE has no MMX, no 3dNOW and no SSE [1 or 2] NONE of which a stock build of mplayer [up to pre8.785
Re:nobody seems to have heard of this codec (Score:2)
Tom
Re:nobody seems to have heard of this codec (Score:2)
Tom
Wavelet vs. DCT? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not that I have absolutely no idea of codecs, I 've learned the basics by programming a very low bitrate (low quality
Re:Wavelet vs. DCT? (Score:2)
No. H264/MPEG4-AVC does not use the DCT transform. Plus: Even just H264 I-frames have been shown to equal, and in some cases surpass the quality/bitrate of JPEG2000.
Theora? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Theora? (Score:2)
Theora encoders are very likely nowhere near the level maturity held by some of the other codecs here (somebody who knows better back that up for me - I know nothing about Theora encoders) that have actually been around for ages. Still, it would have been nice to see Theora in action. Even if it was just as a comparison of how far they have to go really, it would have bee
Re:Theora? (Score:5, Informative)
Theora is still in alpha stages and still has many problems with it. Currently it doesn't stand a chance with the codecs in the shoot-out, especially with the bitrates they were using in the tests.
That being said, remember that Theora is already pretty useful for low bitrate Internet streams.
Theora works. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Theora works. (Score:3, Insightful)
If (or when) the developers manage to solve these problems Theora will become a viable codec, but if they had reviewed it now, it would have only gotten a bad publicity.
An On2 derivative (Score:4, Informative)
A quote from the Theora faq [theora.org]:
So there! Theora is optimized VP3, which means there's a good chance it would turn out to be a faster codec. But as far as visual quality is concerned Theora is likely to be just as good or just as bad as VP3.On2 itself is well represented in the survey by its VP6 codec, and judging from the pseudo version numbers on the codec names, it should be safe to assume that VP3 is inferior to VP6 (VP6 - VP3 = 3 generations of development).
Re:An On2 derivative (Score:3, Informative)
Those of us who left (and one friend who still works for them) are quite surprised they're still around, they used to be big into codecs for video games back when they were Duck, one of their last projects was helping port FFVII to the PC, and they did a lot of Sega stuff too before that
Re:Theora? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you have to use a command line encoder that only accepts some weird raw picture format which by my (and most other persons', I presume) standards is just silly and in no way usable (*). Unless mencoder supports it, of course. But that still doesn't work with his usual toolchain.
(*): And don't come with that "oh, but it's alpha software. Things like that can wait!" because it won't get any use or testing at all if they keep it that way. So when 1.0 finally comes out they get bashed for its horrible quality and have to spend months tuning their encoder again, doing work they could have saved themselves had they had better testing from the start. That's how I guess it's going to be when 1.0 finally comes around.
PS: I still think it's a pretty cool project and with the java implementation for streaming, it would be very nice to see more wide-spread use of Theora, but I won't be holding my breath.
Re:Theora? (Score:4, Informative)
These codecs have not been removed, because the Doom9 guy hate them or something, but because the old test results still apply and testing them over and over again would just be a waste of time.
IIRC VP3 (and DivX 3) was removed in 2003. So check out a comparison from 2003 to see how it performs.
Re:Theora? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I've re-included Microsoft's WMV9 (...)"
This means that WMV9 was dropped in the past, too.
It contimiues: "(...) especially since it is part of the specification of HD DVD and Blu-ray. There have been some improvements in WMV9 (...)"
So this means that Theora is not dropped forever. When Theora hits a significant milestone (1.0?) and shows improvements in quality over VP3, it's likely to be tested again.
Theora is a victim of xiph's own anti-marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
Ogg-Vorbis is the best audio-codec technically - but everybody calls it "ogg" and not "ogg-vorbis" because the file extension is .ogg
Effectively, xiph does everything possible to sabotage their own product: It doesn't have a good sounding name, it doesn't have a consistent name ("ogg" versus "ogg-vorbis"), they don't have any buttons/banners to put on products on xiph.org and there is lots of confusion about container format (ogg) and codec (vorbis), which is the "U"-part from FUD.
The only reason anybody uses ogg at all is because it is excellent technically and beats all other audio codecs by a longshot.
Unfortunately, the guys at xiph don't acknowledge that fact and insist of wanting to have videos with .ogg extension, too, which is doomed to fail because nobody wants to have audio and video to have the same file extension.
The users have created a pseudo standard file extension of .ogm for XVid/Vorbis streams which does quite well in the P2P-networks (= successful), but Ogg/Theora has the problem that it isn't as mature and even when they mature probably won't be *that* much better than the others. So even if the xiph guys manage to put out a competitive Theora codec, their own confusion and uncertainity (especially their stubborn and idiotic decision to have .ogg for both audio and video) will sabotage any hopes of success, the way I see it.
Which is really unfortunate.
Things would be much better if they would use .ogt or something for ogg/Theora, but the guys at xiph just refuse to :-(
No OGM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No OGM? (Score:5, Informative)
And ogg theora is a VERY outdated version of the vp codec. VP6.x was tested, theora is based on vp4.something, a more than 2 years outdated codebase.
draw you own conclusions
Re:No OGM? (Score:5, Informative)
Theora also has some changes that allow potentially much higher quality - although the reference encoder doesn't use them yet. Also the current reference encoder tries to encode noise very faithfully, and that causes noticeable quality issues (especially "beating" at low bitrates on noisy source data). Having said that, I normally find Theora to be noticeably better quality at the same bitrate than DivX.
Re:No OGM? (Score:2)
And XVid was the winner last year and second this time - Vorbis is the best audio codec in most listening tests.
Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just a small point, but I think it's the distributors who are in for a rude awakening. The producers of content will continue to thrive.
DivX, XVid = MPEG4 advanced simple profile (Score:2)
The profiles are the "Simple profile" and the one DivX and similars use, is the "advanced simple profile". Don't go in the other profiles which talk about sprites yadda yadda because nobody has been able to do such thing (yet).
So yes, so far all advances are adjustments into "how much can we push the mpeg4 advanced simple profile" to do better compression, while still retaining compatibility with the decoder.
A revolution into coding
H264 and MPlayer : you can try x264 (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.videolan.org/x264.html [videolan.org]
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
Re:H264 and MPlayer : you can try x264 (Score:2)
Best to wait.
Time to move on? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as mp3(and similar) is good enough to listen to and jpg, bmp and gif are good enough for the various static images needs, divx(xvid) and mpeg2 fill the processing requirements for moving images.
With the cost of storage falling there is less need to build a higher compression video codec. If you want to do some good, come up with faster and higher quality ways to transcode things to an existing open codec standard.
Re:Time to move on? (Score:2)
If M$ does not screw up the AVC standard like they did with the first MPEG-4 one, we will all be happy campers in Mac and Linux land.
Re:Time to move on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Video codec's will always be worked on (Score:5, Informative)
What, you have glaucoma? Are you near-sighted? Go buy some glasses.
The original picture WAS crisp, and there's no reason why the encoded version shouldn't be. We get most of our information from visual sources and so our demand for high-quality visuals will never go down. Normal people take time even distinguishing 64k AAC clips from the original sometimes. But with visuals it's easy to spot artifacts.
divx is watchable and a good size/quality compromise.
Yes, and maybe 64k MP3 is good enough for you. It's not for most people. Be happy, you have what you want. Let the developers develop for the rest of the human population who care.
You can get a 90 minute film onto a cd, for instance.
Yes and as development continues that same 90-minute film on the CD will look closer and closer to the original.
If, in the future, you can encode a 90 minute hdtv into 700mb with no quality loss
This is impossible to do losslessly - that's why we're developing lossy codecs. There will always be a tradeoff between quality and file-size, but it will continue to improve, barring people like you who claim everything is fine, fine. The point of technology is progress. If you're happy with your LPs and your black and white TV, fine, but don't go ruining it for the rest of us.
hardware needed to decode and render the film will probably not use cds.
Uh, what?
DVD compression (Score:2)
Better compression will allow DVD's to carry more HDTV. If a smarter compression allows for a higher resolution to be kept, it's for the better. The higher the resoultion, the less a small artifact will be noticed.
Re:DVD compression (Score:2)
For your
The difference between
Re:DVD compression (Score:2)
Re:Time to move on? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Time to move on? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Time to move on? (Score:2)
Mission option! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mission option! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mission option! (Score:2)
Yes, and records sound better than CDs too...
I've compared the two, myself (and unlike most everyone else on slashdot, I know video encoding very well), and libavcodec comes out ahead every time. The quality of the two are just as good as each other, and libavcodec is at least an order of magnitude faster.
That's not only wrong, it's also incredibly stupid.
The Problem with WMV9 video (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Problem with WMV9 video (Score:5, Funny)
I'd just like to say that "displayal" is the greatest made-up word ever.
Re:The Problem with WMV9 video (Score:2)
i wish I still had a copy of, "Our Most Cromulent Amendments : A Musical"
Is WM9 part of AVC? (Score:4, Informative)
No (Score:3, Informative)
BBC's Dirac ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BBC's Dirac ? (Score:2)
"A lot remains to be done to convert our promising algorithm and experimental implementation into practical useable code."
Re:BBC's Dirac ? (Score:2)
best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20465 [theinquirer.net]
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).
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:2)
A $60 player is nice but I would pay 3 times as much for a unit that not only plays "everything" but actually plays it well.
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:2)
To be fair, it's not the player doing this, it's the fact that all TVs crop off a portion of the picture they recieve. Better TVs crop off less of the picture, but there isn't a TV that exists that will show you the entire 720x480 (NTSC).
Thanks for saying that. I was thinking about getting one for some family members... I guess I'll sti
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:2)
Let's see... Quality, space-savings, extra features, legal issues, etc.
I'm more and more happy every day, that I put the (small) effort into building a multimedia PC. I can play nearly any video/audio format, with no restrictions like being forced to watch track-0 (trailers), no macrovision, etc. The video quality is much better than any stand-alone player I've seen. I can normalize volume so I can hear what they are saying, and not blow out m
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:2)
The thing that would worry me most about a DVD player like that Phillips is the internal codecs would get out of date, and I would have to keep some archaic version of Xvid and Divx around to encode (and reencode) disks for it.
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:2)
MPEG-4 is a standard, and does not change on you. If you bought a VCD player 10 years ago, you can still encode videos with any (modern) MPEG-1 codec.
The only reason there are any problems with current MPEG-4 codecs (not counting b-frames) is that codec makers are including a few of the AVC features into their MPEG-4 codecs (which isn't smart, IMHO) so the
Re:best codec is one I can use in a $60 DVD player (Score:3, Informative)
I still use Xvid (Score:2, Informative)
Luxuries saved for Xvid. Xvid has always played absolutely perfect on it. I can FFW and FRW like it was an ordinary MPEG2, I can seek to a time and the pause is very small. It reads DVDRW's like they were mastered DVD's. It plays Vorbis and can handle WMV, as well nested directory structures.
I did my own little comparison here, just rec
WMV and why it must not be allowed to continue (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WMV and why it must not be allowed to continue (Score:2)
most likely because the media has degraded beyond recovery, and not because the compression techniques and recording technologies haven't been preserved in the achieves.
this is not a new problem, it dates from the invention of writing and the first scratches on a clay tablet. there are secrets to protect, knowledge to preserve. language changes. media changes.
XviD appears to be not only the most logical choice from a p
Re:WMV and why it must not be allowed to continue (Score:2)
Flawed comparison? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that because the sources were not compressed in a lossless fashion, there's less data to work with than they started out with.
So I guess if your goal is to test how well other codecs can recompress MPEG2 data, it's all well and dandy. What might be a better test is to see how all of the codecs work on DV encoded data, as that is rapidly becoming a common source of video information.
Re:Flawed comparison? (Score:2)
Re:Flawed comparison? (Score:2)
I don't know... maybe POV ray renders? Or perhaps they could capture analogue TV? *shrugs* Either way, it's not my problem.
Did you mean to imply that DV encoded data isn't lossy compressed? I believe it is, fixed 5:1 compression in fact.
No, but it's pretty soon going to be the industry standard video source from broadcast to consumer level (if it isn't already). Given that you edit as close to the source data as possible, and onl
Transcoding? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good test for comparing the quality of codecs for ripping DVDs, but do the results hold true when an uncompressed master is used as the source?
My largest complaint with Doom9's comparisons... (Score:2)
He really, really ought to qualify that
Re:What about Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2)
Re:What about Ogg Vorbis? (Score:4, Informative)
MP3 files most definately have frames:
http://www.id3.org/mp3frame.html [id3.org]
http://www.dv.co.yu/mpgscript/mpeghdr.htm [dv.co.yu]
Re:What about Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2, Informative)
Ever wondered why MP3 files aren't "gapless" and there are short gaps of silence between tracks that should otherwise run together? This is why. It's not a problem with your player; it's the way the MP3 spec works... it pads your sound file out to be a multiple of x samples.
Re:Free as in ... (Score:2)
Re:Free as in ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Free as in ... (Score:2)
xvid is on the list.
xvid also happens to be the best codec for the little over 50$ dvd/"divx" standalone players.
and besides, why would your mom be intrested in your flicks?