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 orobjective.

Performance characteristics like compression/decompression speed, supported profiles/options, supported resolutions, supported rate control strategies etc.

General software characteristics, for example:

Manufacturer Supported OS (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) Version number Date of release Type of license (commercial, free, open source) Supported interfaces (VfW, DirectShow, etc.) Price for codec (volume discounts, etc.)

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. First, 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. Second, 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. Third, 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].

Objective 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), where the whole original video signal is available Reduced reference methods (RR), where only partial information of the original video is available, and No-reference methods (NR), where the original video is not available at all.

The main FR metrics are: Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) The most widely used video quality metric during the last 20 years (used approximately in 99% of scientific papers and in 20% of marketing materials). However, the validity of this metric is limited. It is only conclusive when the same codec (or codec type) and content is being compared.[1][2] Structural similarity (SSim.) A new metric (suggested in 2004) which shows better results than PSNR at the cost of a reasonable increase in computational complexity. VQuad-HD an ITU-T J.341 standard The new standard was recently (Jan 2011) approved by ITU-T as J.341. The new VQuad-HD algorithm was developed by Swissqual in 2008-2010. It was the best performing model in the HDTV competition to find the new standard that was organized by the independent and non-commercial Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG).More information on VQuad-HD can be found in the technical white paper "Video Quality Measurement for High Definition Video Signals" available for download from: white paper Some other metrics have been suggested by Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG), private companies, and universities, but are not widespread.

The main comparison method is the so-called RD-curve (rate/distortion chart), where a metric value is plotted against the Y-axis and the bitrate against the X-axis.

Some example NR metrics are:

Blocking measure measurement power of so called blocking artefacts (extremely noticeable without deblocking filter usage on low bitrates)

Blurring measure measurement of common video blurring (washout)

Subjective video quality

This 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 of recording 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:

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

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 a 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, etc. Denoising and deflicking commonly maintain PSNR value, but increase visual quality (the best slow denoising filters also increase PSNR on middle and high bitrates). Deshacking seriously decreases PSNR, but increases visual quality. The same situation with postfilters deblocking and deringing maintain 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 sum of absolute differences (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.

It is difficult to use long sequences for subjective testing. Commonly, three or four ten-second sequences are used, compared with full movies used for objective metrics. Sequence selection is important those sequences that are similar to the ones used by developers to tune their codecs are more competitive.

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

The following issues should be considered when estimating probable codec performance differences:

Decompression (sometimes compression) frame time uniformity. Big differences in this value can cause annoyingly jerky playback.

SIMD support by processor and codec e.g., MMX, SSE, SSE2, each of which change CPU performance on some kinds of tasks (often including those with which codecs are concerned).

Multi-threading support by processor and codec (sometimes turning on Hyper-threading support (if available on a particular CPU) causes codec speed to decrease)

RAM speed (generally important for most codec implementations) Processor cache size (low values sometimes cause serious speed degradation, e.g. for CPUs with low cache such as several of the Intel Celeron series.)

GPU usage by codec some codecs can drastically increase their performance by taking advantage of GPU resources.

So, for example, codec A (being optimized for memory usage, i.e. uses less memory) may give slower performance on modern computers (which are typically not memory limited) than codec B. The same pair of codecs may give opposite results if running on an older computer with reduced memory (or cache) resources.

Profiles support
Modern standards define a wide range of features and require very substantial software or hardware efforts and resources for their implementation. Only selected profiles of a standard are typically supported in any particular product. (This very common situation for H.264 implementations 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-rayDisc, 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.

Multiview High Profile: This profile supports two or more views using both inter-picture (temporal) and MVC inter-view prediction, but does not support field pictures and macroblock-adaptive frame-field coding.

The standard also 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).

Moreover, the standard now also contains three Scalable Video Coding profiles.

Scalable Baseline Profile: A scalable extension of the Baseline profile. Scalable High Profile: A scalable extension of the High profile. Scalable High Intra Profile: The Scalable High Profile constrained to all-Intra use.

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

Supported rate control strategies

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.

Software characteristics
Codecs list
General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc.

Codec

Creator /Mainta iner

Fi rst pu bli c rel ea se da te

Lat est stab le vers ion

Lic ens e

Patented compres sion formats

Com press ion meth od

Open CLsup port

nVidiaC UDAsup port

ATIStre am/AM DAPP support

IntelA VXsup port

Intel Quic k Sync Vide osup port

libtheora( Theora)

Xiph.org

1.1.1 2002BSD(2009)[3 09-25 style[4] ] MPL 1.1,GN U GPL 2, GNU LGPL 2.1 MPL 1.1,GN U GPL 2, GNU LGPL 2,MIT Licens e GNU GPL GNU GPL

Patented, but freely licensed[*]

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

diracresearch (Dirac)

BBC 1.0.2 2008Research (2009)[5 09-17 ] Department

none

Lossy/lo Unknown ssless

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

Schrding er (Dirac)

David Schleef

1.0.11 2008(2012)[5 02-22 ]

none

Lossy/lo Unknown ssless

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

x264

x264 team

r2019 2003 (2011)[6

][7]

MPEG-4 Lossy/lo AVC/H.264 ssless MPEG-4 ASP

No

No

No

Partial

Unknow n Unknow n

Xvid

Xvid team

1.3.2 2001 (2011)[8

]

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

FFmpeg(l ibavcodec )

FFmpeg team

0.10.0 2000 (2012)[9

]

MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.261, GNU H.263, VC- Lossy/lo Unknown LGPL 3, WMV7, ssless WMV8, MJPEG, MPEG-4v3, DV etc. GNU LGPL MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP etc. Blackbird Lossy/lo Unknown ssless

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

FFavs(lib FFavs team avcodec)

2009

0.0.3[10]

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

Forbidden 2006Blackbird Technologi 01 es plc

Proprie tary

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

DivX

DivX, Inc.

2001

DivX Plus Proprie MPEG-4 (2010)[1 tary ASP, H.264

1]

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

DivX

a hack of Microsoft's MPEG-4v3 codec[12][13] 3ivx Technologi es Pty. Ltd. Nero AG

1998

Microsoft's 3.20 Proprie MPEG-4v3 alpha[14 tary (not MPEG] (2000) 4 compliant) MPEG-4 ASP

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

3ivx

5.0.2 Proprie 2001 (2007)[1 tary 5] Unkno wn

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow

Nero Digital ProRes 422 /ProR es 4444 Sorenson

2003

MPEG-4 Proprie ASP, H.264[ tary 16] Proprie tary Proprie

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Apple Inc. Sorenson

2007 1998

Unknown Sorenson

Lossy Lossy

Unknown Unknown

Unknown Unknown

Unknown Unknown

Unknown Unknown

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. Fi rst pu bli c rel ea se da te

Codec

Creator /Mainta iner

Lat est stab le vers ion

Lic ens e

Patented compres sion formats

Com press ion meth od

Open CLsup port

nVidiaC UDAsup port

ATIStre am/AM DAPP support

IntelA VXsup port

Intel Quic k Sync Vide osup port

Video Sorenson Spark VP3

Media Sorenson Media On2 Technologi es On2 Technologi es On2 Technologi es On2 Technologi es On2 Technologi es On2 Technologi es (now owned by Google) Avid Technology 2002

tary Proprie tary BSDstyle[4] Proprie tary Proprie tary Proprie tary Proprie tary

Video Sorenson Spark Patented, but freely licensed[*] VP4 Lossy Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n

2000

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

VP4

2001

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

VP5

2002

VP5

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

VP6

2003

VP6

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

VP7

2005

VP7

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

VP8

2008

BSDstyle

Patented, but freely licensed

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

DNxHD Cinema Craft Encoder SP2 TMPGEn cFree Version

2008

Proprie tary

VC-3

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n Unknow n

1.00.01 Custom .09 Proprie Technology 2000 (2009)[1 tary Corporation 7] 2.525.6 4.184 Proprie (2008)[1 tary
8]

MPEG-1, MPEG-2

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Pegasys Inc.

2001

MPEG-1, MPEG-2

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

Windows Media Encoder

Microsoft

1999

WMV, VC1, (in early 9 versions MP (2003) EG-4 Part (WMV Proprie 2and not 3 tary MPEG-4 inFour compliant CC) MPEG-4v3, MPEG-4v2)

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

Cinepak

Created by SuperMac, Inc. Currently maintained by Compressio n Technologi es, Inc.[19]

1991

1.10.0. Proprie 26 tary (1999)

Unknown

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

Indeo Video

Intel Corporation , currently 1992 offered by Ligos Corporation

5.2

Proprie Indeo Video tary

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

General video codec information creator/company, license/price, etc. Fi rst pu bli c rel ea se da te

Codec

Creator /Mainta iner

Lat est stab le vers ion

Lic ens e

Patented compres sion formats

Com press ion meth od

Open CLsup port

nVidiaC UDAsup port

ATIStre am/AM DAPP support

IntelA VXsup port

Intel Quic k Sync Vide osup port

TrueMoti The Duck 1995 Corporation on S RealVide RealNetwor 1997 ks o ACT-L3 Streambox Ben RudiakGould 200302-21

Proprie TrueMotion tary S RealVi Proprie deo tary 10[20] 3.4 (2009) Proprie tary GNU GPL 2 H.263, RealVideo Unknown

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n Unknow n

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Huffyuv

2.1.1 2000 (2003)[2

1]

none

Lossless

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Lagarith

Ben 2004Greenwood 10-04

1.3.26 (20110925)[22]

GNU GPL 2

none

Lossless

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

MainCon MainConce pt GmbH cept

1993

8.8.0 (2011)

MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, Proprie H.263, VCtary 3, MPEG-4 Part 2, DV, MJPEG etc. MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVC

Lossy

Yes[23]

Yes[24][25]

Unknown

Unknown

Yes[26]

Elecard

Elecard

G4 Proprie 2008 (2010)[2 tary 7]

Lossy

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknow n

The Xiph.Org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for everyone, for any purpose.[28]

DivX Plus is also known as DivX 8. The latest stable version for Mac is DivX 7 for Mac.

Native 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.

Encoder Operating System Support Codec 3ivx Blackbird Cinepak DivX FFmpeg Mac OS X Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes other Unix & Unix-like Yes Yes No No Yes Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Encoder Operating System Support Codec RealVideo Schrdinger (Dirac) Sorenson Video 3 Theora x264 Xvid Elecard
Technical details

Mac OS X Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

other Unix & Unix-like Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No

Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Codec Blackbir d Cinepak

Compression type Lossy compression

Highest Variabl Basic Highest supported bitr e frame algorithm supported resolution ate rate Unknown Vector quantization
[29]

Unknown

384288 (PAL), 320240 (NTSC) Unknown

Yes Unknow n

Lossy compression

Unknown

Dirac Sorenso n3 Theora

Wavelet Lossy/Lossless compre compressio ssion n Lossy compression Unknown Discrete cosine transform Discrete cosine transform Unknown

Unlimited[30]

Unlimited[30]

Yes Unknow n Via chaining

[*]

Unknown

Unknown 1,048,5601,048,560[
31][32]

Lossy compression

2 Gibit/s

RealVid eo Elecard

Lossy compression Lossy compression

Unknown Unlimited

Unknown 16k

Yes Yes

Theora streams with different frame rates can be chained in the same file, but each stream has a fixed frame rate.[31]

Freely available codecs comparisons

List of freely available comparisons and their content description:

Name of comparison

Type of comparison

Date(s) of List of compared codecs publication

Comments

Series of Doom9 codec comparisons

Series of subjectivecomparison of popular codecs

2002 2003 2005

DivX4.12, On2 VP3, XviD 1/25 and WMV8 and Subjective comparison DivX5.01, XviD 3/27 with convenient and ON2 VP4 at visualization first version Dirac, Elecard AVC HP, libavcodec

MPEG-4, NeroDigital ASP, QuickTime 7, Snow, Theora, VideoSoft H.264 HP, XviD 1.1 beta 2 in last one 2005 (Jan.): Mpegable AVC, Moonlight H.264, MainConcept H.264, Fraunhofer IIS, Ateme MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, Videosoft H.264, DivX Pro 5.1.1 (Not 264! Used for comparison with H.264 codecs as well tuned codec from previous generation 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 Detailed objective (MPEG-4 ASP comparisons reference), MainConcept H.264, Intel H.264, VSS H.264, x264, Apple H.264, (partially), Sorenson H.264 (partially) 2007: XviD (MPEG4 ASP codec), MainConcept H.264, Intel H.264, x264, AMD H.264, Artemis H.264 2009: XviD (MPEG4 ASP codec), Dicas H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel IPP H.264, MainConcept H.264, x264 2010: XviD (MPEG4 ASP codec), DivX H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel MediaSDK

Series of MSU annual H.264 codecs comparisons Series of objective H.264 codecs comparisons with MPEG-4 ASP reference

2004 2005 Jan. 2005 Dec. 2006 Dec. 2007 Dec. 2009 May 2010 Apr.

AVC/H.264, MainConcept H.264, Microsoft Expression, Encoder, Theora, x264 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, MindVid v1.0 beta 1, MSUlab beta v0.2.4, MSUlab v0.5.2, PicVideo JPEG v.2.10.0.29, VBLE beta 2007 (16 codecs): Alpary, ArithYuv, AVIzlib, CamStudio GZIP, CorePNG, FastCodec, FFV1, Huffyuv, Lagarith, LOCO, LZO, MSU Lab, PICVideo, Snow, x264, YULS

Two size and time Series of Lossless Video comparisons of lossless Codecs Comparison codecs (with lossless checking)

2004 Oct. 2007 Mar.

in 2007 more detailed report with new codecs including first standard H.264 (x264)

MSU MPEG-4 codecs comparison

Objective comparison of MPEG-4 codecs

2005 Mar.

Different versions of DivX was also DivX 5.2.1, DivX 4.12, compared. The Xvid DivX 3.22, MS MPEG-4 results may be 3688 v3, XviD 1.0.3, 3ivx erroneous, as D4 4.5.1, OpenDivX 0.3 deblocking was disabled for it while used for DivX. DivX 6.0, Xvid 1.1.0, x264, WMV 9.0 (2 bitrates for every codec) bitcontrol MPEG-2 Video Decoder, DScaler MPEG2 Video Decoder, Elecard MPEG-2 Video Decoder, ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder (libavcodec), InterVideo Video Decoder, Ligos MPEG Video Decoder, MainConcept MPEG Video Decoder, Pinnacle PSNR via VQM via SSIM comparison was also done

Scientifically Subjective Comparison accuratesubjective compa of Modern Video Codecs rison using 50 experts and SAMVIQ methodology

2006 Feb.

MPEG-2 Video Decoders Comparison

Objective MPEG2 Decoderscomparison

2006 May.

Objectly tested (100 times per stream) decoders "crash test" (test on damaged stream like scratched DVD or satellite samples)

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, Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, Sometimes comparison Microsoft RLE, Microsoft is short (up to one text Video 1, XviD, 3ivx, line per codec) Animation, Blackmagic 10-bit, Blackmagic 8-bit, Cinepak, DV, H.261, H.263, Motion-JPEG, MPEG-4 Video, PNG, Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3 Quite detailed comparison of software Dirac, Dirac Pro, Theora I, available in Q2-2008; H.264, Motion JPEG2000 However, a buggy (the tested codecs are version of from Q2-2008) ffmpeg2Theora was used VQM, SSIM and PSNR for 19 CIF video clips with bit-rates of 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kbit/s

Codecs comparison

Personal subjective opini on

2003 Nov.

Evaluation of Dirac and Theora

Scientific paper

2009 Mar.

VP8 versus x264

Objective and subjective quality comparison of VP8 and x264

2010 Jun.

VP8, x264