Comparison of video codecs - is an evaluation process for codec similarities and differences.

A video codec
is a device or software that enables video compression and or decompression for digital video. The
compression usually employs lossy data compression, so quality measurement issues become important.
Around the time when the compact disc entered the market as a digital-format replacement for analog
audio, it became feasible to also begin storing and using video in digital form, and a variety of such
technologies began to emerge.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Introduction to comparison
• 2 Video quality
o 2.1 Objective video quality
o 2.2 Subjective video quality
• 3 Performance comparison
o 3.1 Speed comparison
o 3.2 Profiles support
o 3.3 Supported rate control strategies
• 4 Software characteristics
o 4.1 Codecs list
o 4.2 Operating system support
o 4.3 Technical details
• 5 Freely available codecs comparisons
• 6 See also

• 7 Notes and references

[edit] Introduction to comparison

The following characteristics are compared in video codecs comparisons:

• Video quality per bitrate (or range of bitrates). Commonly video quality is considered the main
characteristic of codec comparisons. Video quality comparisons can be subjective or objective.
• Performance characteristics like compression/decompression speed, supported profiles/options,
supported resolutions, supported rate control strategies etc.
• General software characteristics, for example:
o Manufacturer
o Supported OS (Linux, Mac OS, Windows)
o Version number
o Date of release
o Type of license (commercial, free, open source)
o Supported interfaces (VfW, DirectShow, etc)
o Price for codec (volume discounts, etc)

Another important issue for comparison is application area. The following application areas need different
codec characteristics:

• Videoconferencing presume
o very fast compression (minimum delay and similar compression time for all frames)
o very fast decompression (minimum delay)
 o pretty good error resistance
o good quality characteristics for low bitrates
o camera artefacts suppression is welcome
• DVD or MPEG-4 CD video compression presume
o maximum quality compression (maybe multipass: 2-pass compression)
o fast decompression (but constant delay with buffering is possible)
o error resistance mechanism implementation is welcome, but not critical
o maximum quality characteristics for high and medium bitrates
o typical video processing (like automatic denoising, deinterlacing) is welcome.

So for comparison of best DVD MPEG-2 codec with base profile videoconferencing H.264 implementation
can cause some confusing issues and generally wrong results. Such method of codecs comparison was
widely used for marketing materials preparation during dot-com bubble.

[edit] Video quality

The quality the codec can achieve is heavily based on the compression format the codec uses. A codec is
not a format, and there can be multiple codecs that implement the same compression specification – for
example, MPEG-1 codecs typically do not achieve quality/size ratio comparable to codecs that implement
the more modern H.264 specification. But quality/size ratio of output produced by different
implementations of the same specification can vary, too.

Prior to comparing codec video quality, it is important to understand that every codec can give a varying
degree of quality for a given set of frames within a video sequence. Numerous factors play a role in this
variability. Firstly, all codecs have a bitrate control mechanism which is responsible for determining the
bitrate and quality on a per-frame basis. A difference between variable bit rate VBR and constant bit rate
CBR creates a trade-off between a consistent quality over all frames, and a more constant bitrate, which is
required for some applications. Secondly, some codecs differentiate between different types of frames such
as key frames and non-key frames, differing in their importance to overall visual quality and the extent to
which they can be compressed. Thirdly, quality depends on prefiltrations, that is included on all present-day
codecs. Other factors can also come into play.

For a sufficiently long clip, it is possible to select sequences which have suffered little from the
compression and sequences which have suffered heavily, especially if CBR was used, in which the quality
between frames can vary highly due to different amounts of compression needed to achieve a constant
bitrate. So, in any one long clip such as a full length movie, any two codecs may perform quite differently
on a particular sequence from the clip, while the codecs may be approximately equal (or the situation
reversed) in quality over a wider sequence of frames. Press-releases and amateur forums sometimes select
sequences known to favor a particular codec or style of rate control in reviews[citation needed].

[edit] Objective video quality

Main article: Video quality

Objective video evaluation techniques are mathematical models that approximate results of subjective
quality assessment, but are based on criteria and metrics that can be measured objectively and
automatically evaluated by a computer program. Objective methods are classified based on the availability
of the original video signal, which is considered to be of high quality (generally not compressed).
Therefore, they can be classified as:

• Full Reference Methods (FR),

• Reduced Reference Methods (RR) and
• No-Reference Methods (NR).
Let's list main FR metrics:

• PSNR - the most widely used video quality metric during last 20 years (used approximately in
99% of scientific papers and in 20% of marketing materials)
• SSIM - new metric (was suggested in 2004) shows better results, than PSNR with reasonable
computational complexity increasing.
• some other metrics was also suggested by VQEG, private companies and universities, but not so
popular.

Main comparison method is so called "RD-curve" (Rate/Distortion chart), where Y-axis used for metric
value and X-axis used for bitrate.

Following NR metrics are used:

• Blocking measure - measurement power of so called "blocking artifact" (very annoying without
deblocking filter usage on low bitrates)
• Blurring measure - measurement of common video blurring (washout)
• etc

[edit] Subjective video quality

Main article: Subjective video quality

It is concerned with how video is perceived by a viewer and designates his or her opinion on a particular
video sequence. Subjective video quality tests are quite expensive in terms of time (preparation and
running) and human resources.

There is an enormous number of ways of showing video sequences to experts and to record their opinions.
A few of them have been standardized. They are thoroughly described in ITU-R recommendation BT.500.

Following subjective video quality comparison methods are used:

• DSIS (Double Stimulus Impairment Scale) - suggested in ITU-R BT.500-11.

• DSCQS (Double Stimulus Continuous Quality Scale) type I and type II - suggested in ITU-R
BT.500-11
• SCACJ (Stimulus Comparison Adjectival Categorical Judgement) - suggested in ITU-R BT.500-
11
• SAMVIQ (Subjective Assessment Method for Video Quality evaluation)
• MSUCQE (MSU Continuous Quality Evaluation)

The reason for measuring subjective video quality is the same as for measuring the Mean Opinion Score for
audio. Opinions of experts can be averaged; average mark is usually given with confidence interval.
Additional procedures can be used for averaging, for example experts who give unstable results can be
rejected (for instance, if their correlation with average opinion is small).

In case of video codecs this is very common situation. When codecs with similar objective results show
results with different subjective results, the main reasons can be:

• Pre- and postfilters are widely used in codecs. Commonly codecs use prefilters like video
denoising, deflicking, deshacking and etc. Denoising and deflicking are commonly save the same
PSNR value, but increase visual quality (best slow denoising filters also increase PSNR on middle
 and high bitrates). Deshacking seriously decrease PSNR, but increase visual quality. The same
situation with postfilter - deblocking and deringing are save PSNR, but increase quality. Graining
(suggested in H.264) essentially increases video quality especially on big plasma screens, but
decrease PSNR.

Note: All filters worsen compression/decompression time, so they increase visual quality, but
decrease speed.

• Motion estimation (ME) search strategy can also cause different visual quality for the same
PSNR. So called true motion search commonly will not reach minimum SAD values in codec ME,
but may result in better visual quality. Also such methods require more compression time.
• Rate control strategy. VBR commonly cause better visual quality marks than CBR for the same
average PSNR values for sequences.

For subjective video comparison it's difficult to use big amount of sequences. Commonly 3-4 10 seconds
sequences are used in comparison with full movies compared with objective metrics. So sequences
selection become pretty important (as far as those sequences will be close to the developers codec tuned
sequences, their results will be more competitive).

[edit] Performance comparison

[edit] Speed comparison

Main article: Frame rate

Number of frames per second (FPS) commonly used for compression/decompression speed measurement.

In case of codecs following issues should be taken into account for correct comparison:

• Decompression (sometimes compression) frame time uniformity. Big difference in this time
can cause annoying jerkily playback.
• SIMD support by processor and codec - MMX, SSE, SSE2.
• Multi-threading support by processor and codec (sometimes Hyper-threading support turning on
cause codec speed decreasing)
• RAM speed (pretty important for codecs)
• Processor's cache size (sometimes cause serious speed degradation on Celeron's)

for example codec A is more optimized for memory usage (use less memory) but shows lower results than
codec B on modern computer. The same codecs places can be swapped on old processor with limited cache
size.

[edit] Profiles support

Main article: H.264

Modern standards declare a wide range of features and require millions of code lines for their
implementation. Only selected profiles can be supported by exact codec (this very common situation for
H.264 for example).

The H.264 standard includes the following seven sets of capabilities, which are referred to as profiles,
targeting specific classes of applications:
 • Baseline Profile (BP): Primarily for lower-cost applications with limited computing resources,
this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications.
• Main Profile (MP): Originally intended as the mainstream consumer profile for broadcast and
storage applications, the importance of this profile faded when the High profile was developed for
those applications.
• Extended Profile (XP): Intended as the streaming video profile, this profile has relatively high
compression capability and some extra tricks for robustness to data losses and server stream
switching.
• High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly
for high-definition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray
Disc, for example).
• High 10 Profile (Hi10P): Going beyond today's mainstream consumer product capabilities, this
profile builds on top of the High Profile — adding support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded
picture precision.
• High 4:2:2 Profile (Hi422P): Primarily targeting professional applications that use interlaced
video, this profile builds on top of the High 10 Profile — adding support for the 4:2:2 chroma
sampling format while using up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
• High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile (Hi444PP): This profile builds on top of the High 4:2:2 Profile —
supporting up to 4:4:4 chroma sampling, up to 14 bits per sample, and additionally supporting
efficient lossless region coding and the coding of each picture as three separate color planes.

In addition, the standard now contains four additional all-Intra profiles, which are defined as simple subsets
of other corresponding profiles. These are mostly for professional (e.g., camera and editing system)
applications:

• High 10 Intra Profile: The High 10 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.

• High 4:2:2 Intra Profile: The High 4:2:2 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
• High 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
• CAVLC 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use and to CAVLC
entropy coding (i.e., not supporting CABAC).

An accurate comparison of codecs must take the profile variations within each codec into account.

See also MPEG-2 Profiles and Levels.

[edit] Supported rate control strategies

Main article: Rate distortion theory

Videocodecs rate control strategies can be classified as:

• Variable bit rate (VBR) and

• Constant bit rate (CBR).

Variable bit rate (VBR) is a strategy to maximize the visual video quality and minimize the bit rate. On fast
motion scenes, a variable bit rate uses more bits than it does on slow motion scenes of similar duration yet
achieves a consistent visual quality. For real-time and non-buffered video streaming when the available
bandwidth is fixed, e.g. in videoconferencing delivered on channels of fixed bandwidth, a constant bit rate
(CBR) must be used.

CBR is commonly used for videoconferences, satellite and cable broadcasting. VBR is commonly used for
video CD/DVD creation and video in programs.
Usage of different rate control strategies - one of the main reasons of different results of codecs,
implemented one standard.

[edit] Software characteristics

[edit] Codecs list

Basic general information about the codecs: creator/company, license/price etc.

First public Latest stable Patented

Codec Creator/Maintainer License
release date version algorithms
Blackbird Forbidden Technologies plc January 2006 2 Proprietary Blackbird
Created by Radius, Inc.

Cinepak Currently maintained by 1992 ? Proprietary ?

Compression Technologies,
Inc.[1]
DivX DivX, Inc. 2001 6.8 Proprietary MPEG-4 ASP
MPEG-1,
FFmpeg GNU
FFmpeg team 2000 0.4.9-pre1 MPEG-2,
(libavcodec) LGPL
MPEG-4 etc.
Sorenson 3 Sorenson Media July 1, 2001 4.5 Proprietary Sorenson 3
α1:
β3: April 16, BSD-
Theora Xiph.org September none[*]
2008[2] style[3]
25, 2002
RealVideo RealNetworks 1997 RealVideo 10 Proprietary ?
x264 x264 team 2003 r912 GNU GPL H.264
Windows Media
wmv Microsoft 1999 Video 9 (WMV 3 Proprietary wmv
in FourCC)
Xvid Xvid team 2001 1.1.3 GNU GPL MPEG-4 ASP

*
The Xiph.Org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to Theora and other VP3-derived
codecs for everyone, for any purpose.[4]

[edit] Operating system support

Note that operating system support does not mean whether video encoded with the codec can be played
back on the particular operating system – for example, video encoded with the DivX codec is playable on
Unix-like systems using free MPEG-4 ASP decoders (FFmpeg MPEG-4 or Xvid), but the DivX codec
(which is a software product) is only available for Windows and Mac OS X.

Codec Mac OS X Unix & Unix-like Windows

Blackbird Yes Yes Yes
Cinepak Yes No Yes
DivX Yes No Yes[*]
FFmpeg Yes Yes Yes
Sorenson 3 Yes No Yes
Theora Yes Yes Yes
RealVideo Yes Yes Yes
x264 Yes Yes Yes
 Xvid Yes Yes Yes

*
Limited support for Windows Vista.

[edit] Technical details

Highest
Compression Highest supported Variable
Codec Basic algorithm supported
type resolution frame rate
bitrate
Lossy 384×288 (PAL), 320×240
Blackbird ? ? Yes
compression (NTSC)
Lossy Vector
Cinepak ? ? ?
compression quantization[5]
Lossy
Sorenson 3 ? ? ? ?
compression
Lossy Discrete cosine
Theora 2 Gibit/s 1048560×1048560[6][7] Partial[*]
compression transform
Lossy
RealVideo ? ? ? ?
compression

*
Theora streams with different frame rates can be chained in the same file, but each stream has a fixed
frame rate.[6]

[edit] Freely available codecs comparisons

List of freely available comparisons and their content description:

Name of Type of Date(s) of

List of compared codecs Comments
comparison comparison publication
• DivX4.12, On2 VP3, XviD
1/25 and WMV8 and
DivX5.01, XviD 3/27 and
• 2002 ON2 VP4 - at first version
Series of Subjective
Series of • 2003
subjective comparison with
Doom9 codec • Dirac, Elecard AVC HP,
comparison of convenient
comparisons libavcodec MPEG-4,
popular codecs • 2005 visualization
NeroDigital ASP, QuickTime
7, Snow, Theora, VideoSoft
H.264 HP, XviD 1.1 beta 2 -
in last one
Series of MSU Series of • 2004 • 2005 (Jan.): Mpegable AVC, Detailed objective
annual H.264 objective H.264 • 2005 Moonlight H.264, comparisons
codecs codecs Jan. MainConcept H.264,
comparisons comparisons with • 2005 Fraunhofer IIS, Ateme
MPEG-4 ASP Dec. MPEG-4 AVC/H.264,
reference Videosoft H.264, DivX Pro
• 2006
Dec. 5.1.1 (Not 264! Used for
comparison with H.264
codecs as well tuned codec
• 2007 from previous generation
Dec. MPEG-4 ASP)
• 2005 (Dec.): DivX 6.0
 (MPEG-4 ASP reference),
ArcSoft H.264, Ateme
H.264, ATI H.264, Elecard
H.264, Fraunhofer IIS H.264,
VSS H.264, x264
• 2006: DivX 6.2.5 (MPEG-4
ASP reference),
MainConcept H.264, Intel
H.264, VSS H.264, x264,
Apple H.264, (partially),
Sorenson H.264 (partially)

• 2007: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP

codec), MainConcept H.264,
Intel H.264, x264, AMD
H.264, Artemis H.264
• 2004 (14 codecs): Alpary
v2.0, AVIzlib v2.2.3,
CamStudio GZIP v1.0,
CorePNG v0.8.2, FFV1
ffdshow 08/08/04, GLZW
v1.01, HuffYUV v2.1.1,
Lagarith v1.0.0.1, LEAD
JPEG v1.0.0.1, LOCO v0.2,
Two size and • 2004 MindVid v1.0 beta 1, in 2007 - more
Series of time Oct. MSUlab beta v0.2.4, detailed report with
Lossless Video comparisons of MSUlab v0.5.2, PicVideo new codecs
Codecs lossless codecs JPEG v.2.10.0.29, VBLE including first
Comparison (with lossless • 2007 standard H.264
Mar. beta
checking) (x264)
• 2007 (16 codecs): Alpary,
ArithYuv, AVIzlib,
CamStudio GZIP, CorePNG,
FastCodec, FFV1, Huffyuv,
Lagarith, LOCO, LZO, MSU
Lab, PICVideo, Snow, x264,
YULS
Different versions
of DivX was also
compared. The
MSU MPEG-4 Objective DivX 5.2.1, DivX 4.12, DivX 3.22,
• 2005 Xvid results may be
codecs comparison of MS MPEG-4 3688 v3, XviD 1.0.3,
Mar. 3ivx D4 4.5.1, OpenDivX 0.3 erroneous, as
comparison MPEG-4 codecs
deblocking was
disabled for it while
used for DivX.
Scientifically
accurate
Subjective
subjective PSNR via VQM via
Comparison of • 2006 DivX 6.0, Xvid 1.1.0, x264, WMV 9.0
comparison using SSIM comparison
Modern Video Feb. (2 bitrates for every codec)
50 experts and was also done
Codecs
SAMVIQ
methodology
MPEG-2 Objective • 2006 bitcontrol MPEG-2 Video Decoder, Objectly tested
Video MPEG-2 May. DScaler MPEG2 Video Decoder, (100 times per
 Elecard MPEG-2 Video Decoder,
stream) decoders
ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder
"crash test" (test on
Decoders Decoders (libavcodec), InterVideo Video
damaged stream -
Comparison comparison Decoder, Ligos MPEG Video
like scratched DVD
Decoder, MainConcept MPEG Video
or satellite samples)
Decoder, Pinnacle MPEG-2 Decoder
3ivx, Avid AVI 2.02, Cinepak, DivX
3.11, DivX 4.12, DivX 5.0.2, DV,
Huffyuv, Indeo 3.2, Indeo 4.4, Indeo
5.10, Microsoft MPEG-4 v1,
Sometimes
Personal Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, Microsoft
Codecs • 2003 comparison is short
subjective RLE, Microsoft Video 1, XviD, 3ivx,
comparison Nov. Animation, Blackmagic 10-bit, (up to one text line
opinion
per codec)
Blackmagic 8-bit, Cinepak, DV,
H.261, H.263, Motion-JPEG, MPEG-
4 Video, PNG, Sorenson Video,
Sorenson Video 3

[edit] See also

Free software portal

• Comparison of media players

• List of video players (software)
• List of codecs
o Open source codecs and containers
• Comparison of audio codecs
• Comparison of container formats

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ Compression Technologies, Inc., current maintainer of Cinepak

2. ^ Theora development website
3. ^ Theora.org FAQ: what is the license for Theora?
4. ^ Theora.org FAQ: isn't VP3 a patented technology?
5. ^ Technical description of the Cinepak codec
6. ^ a b Theora format specificationPDF (827 KB)
7. ^ Requires about 3 terabytes per uncompressed frame at maximum resolution (pg 37, Theora I
Specification. March 7, 2006)
 [hide]
v•d•e
Data compression software implementations

3ivx · DivX · Nero Digital ·

MPEG-4 ASP
FFmpeg MPEG-4 · HDX4 · Xvid

CoreAVC · Nero Digital AVC ·

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
QuickTime H.264 · x264
Video codecs
(Comparison CorePNG · FFV1 · Huffyuv ·
) Lossless Lagarith · MSU Lossless ·
SheerVideo

Cinepak · Dirac · Indeo · VP3 ·

VP7 · Pixlet · RTVideo · Snow ·
Others
Sorenson · Tarkin · Theora ·
WMV

ADPCM · ATRAC · Dolby

Digital · Dolby Digital
General
Plus · DTS · Musepack ·
TwinVQ · Vorbis · WMA

iLBC · AMBE · IMBE ·

Speech/Voice iSAC · QCELP · RTAudio ·
Audio codecs
Siren · Speex · Truespeech
(Comparison)

Apple Lossless · Dolby

TrueHD · DTS-HD Master
Audio · FLAC · La ·
Lossless
Monkey's Audio ·
OptimFROG · TTA ·
WavPack · WMA Lossless

7-Zip · Ark · File Roller · Info-

Open Source ZIP · KGB Archiver · PeaZip ·
The Unarchiver

7zX · DGCA · Filzip · GCA ·

IZArc · StuffIt Expander ·
Freeware
TUGZip · Zipeg · ZipGenius ·
WinUHA
Archivers
(Comparison) ALZip · Archive Utility ·
MacBinary · PowerArchiver ·
Proprietary
Squeez · StuffIt · WinAce ·
WinRAR · WinZip

ARC · ARJ · JAR · bzip2 ·

compress · gzip · Info-ZIP ·
Command line
LHA · lzop · PAQ · PKZIP ·
RAR · SBC · UPX · UHarc
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs"
Categories: Software comparisons | Video codecs