Comparison of video codecs

A video codec is software or a device that provides encoding and decoding for digital video, and which may or may not include the use of video compression and/or decompression.

The compression may employ lossy data compression, so that quality-measurement issues become important. Shortly after the compact disc became widely available as a digital-format replacement for analog audio, it became feasible to also store and use video in digital form. A variety of technologies soon emerged to do so. The primary goal for most methods of compressing video is to produce video that most closely approximates the fidelity of the original source, while simultaneously delivering the smallest file-size possible. However, there are also several other factors that can be used as a basis for comparison.

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 such as 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 (value for money, 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 may 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 also vary.

Each compression specification defines various mechanisms by which raw video (in essence, a sequence of full-resolution uncompressed digital images) can be reduced in size, from simple bit compression (like Lempel-Ziv-Welch) to psycho-visual and motion summarization, and how the output is stored as a bit stream. So long as the encoder component of the codec adheres to the specification it can choose any combination of these methods to apply different parts of the content. The decoder component of a codec that also conforms to the specification recognises each of the mechanisms used, and thus interprets the compressed stream to render it back into raw video for display (although this will not be identical to the raw video input unless the compression was lossless). Each encoder implements the specification according to its own algorithms and parameters, which means that the compressed output of different codecs will vary, resulting in variations in quality and efficiency between them.

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 that is responsible for determining the bitrate and quality on a per-frame basis. A difference between variable bitrate (VBR) and constant bitrate (CBR) creates a trade-off between a consistent quality over all frames, on the one hand, and a more constant bitrate, which is required for some applications, on the other. 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, which are included on all present-day codecs. Other factors may also come into play.

For a sufficiently long clip, it is possible to select sequences that have suffered little from the compression, and sequences that have suffered heavily, especially if CBR has been used, whereby the quality between frames can vary highly due to different amounts of compression needed to achieve a constant bitrate. So, in a given 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.

Objective video quality

Main article: video quality

Objective video evaluation techniques are mathematical models that seek to predict human judgments of picture quality, as often exemplified by the results of subjective quality assessment experiments. They 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 an original pristine 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.

Subjective video quality

Main article: 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 with regard to time (preparation and running) and human resources.

There are many ways of showing video sequences to experts and recording their opinions. A few of them have been standardized, mainly in ITU-R Recommendation BT.500-13 and ITU-T Recommendation P.910.

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, and the average mark is usually given with confidence interval. Additional procedures can be used for averaging. For example, experts who give unstable results may be rejected (for instance, if their correlation with average opinion is low).

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. Codecs often use prefilters such as video denoising, deflicking, deshaking, etc. Denoising and deflicking normally maintain PSNR value while increasing visual quality (the best slow denoising filters also increase PSNR on medium and high bitrates). Deshaking greatly decreases PSNR, but increases visual quality. Postfilters show similar characteristics — deblocking and deringing maintain PSNR, but increase quality; graining (suggested in H.264) essentially increases video quality, especially on big plasma screens, but decreases PSNR. All filters increase compression/decompression time, so they enhance visual quality but decrease the speed of coding and decoding.
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. Such methods also 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, while full movies are 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

Main article: Frame rate

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, on modern computers (which are typically not memory-limited), give slower performance than codec B. Meanwhile, the same pair of codecs may give opposite results if running on an older computer with reduced memory (or cache) resources.

Profiles support

Main article: H.264

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 is very common 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 (HiP) 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.
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.

See also MPEG-2 Profiles and Levels.

Supported rate control strategies

Main article: Rate distortion theory

Videocodecs rate control strategies can be classified as:

Variable bitrate (VBR) and
Constant bitrate (CBR).

Variable bitrate (VBR) is a strategy to maximize the visual video quality and minimize the bitrate. On fast-motion scenes, a variable bitrate 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 bitrate (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/Maintainer	First public release date	Latest stable version	License	Patented compression formats	Compression method	OpenCL support	nVidia CUDA support	ATI Stream/AMD APP support	Intel AVX support	Intel Quick Sync Video support
libtheora (Theora)	Xiph.org	2002-09-25	1.1.1 (2009)^[1]	BSD-style^[2]	Patented, but freely licensed^[*]	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
dirac-research (Dirac)	BBC Research Department	2008-09-17	1.0.2 (2009)^[3]	MPL 1.1, GNU GPL 2, GNU LGPL 2.1	none	lossy/lossless	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Schrödinger (Dirac)	David Schleef	2008-02-22	1.0.11 (2012)^[3]	MPL 1.1, GNU GPL 2, GNU LGPL 2, MIT License	none	lossy/lossless	Unknown	Yes	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
x264	x264 team	2003	2638(2015)^[4]	GNU GPL	MPEG-4 AVC/H.264	lossy/lossless	Yes	No	No	Yes	Unknown
x265	x265 team	2013	1.8(2015)^[5]	GNU GPL	HEVC/H.265	lossy/lossless	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Unknown
Xvid	Xvid team	2001	1.3.4 (2015)^[6]	GNU GPL	MPEG-4 ASP	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
FFmpeg (libavcodec)	FFmpeg team	2000	2.5 (2014)^[7]	GNU LGPL	MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.261, H.263, VC-3, WMV7, WMV8, MJPEG, MS-MPEG-4v3, DV, Sorenson codec etc.	lossy/lossless	No	No	No	Yes	No
FFavs (libavcodec)	FFavs team	2009	0.0.3^[8]	GNU LGPL	MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP etc.	lossy/lossless	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Blackbird	Forbidden Technologies plc	2006-01	2	Proprietary	Blackbird	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
DivX	DivX, Inc.	2001	DivX Plus (2010)^[9]	Proprietary	MPEG-4 ASP, H.264	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Yes^[10]
DivX ;-)	a hack of Microsoft's MPEG-4v3 codec^[11]^[12]	1998	3.20 alpha^[13] (2000)	Proprietary	Microsoft's MPEG-4v3 (not MPEG-4 compliant)	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
3ivx	3ivx Technologies Pty. Ltd.	2001	5.0.5 (2012)^[14]	Proprietary	MPEG-4 ASP	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Nero Digital	Nero AG	2003	Unknown	Proprietary	MPEG-4 ASP, H.264^[15]	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
ProRes 422 / ProRes 4444	Apple Inc.	2007		Proprietary	Unknown	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Sorenson Video	Sorenson Media	1998		Proprietary	Sorenson Video	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Sorenson Spark	Sorenson Media	2002		Proprietary	Sorenson Spark	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP3	On2 Technologies	2000		BSD-style^[2]	Patented, but freely licensed^[*]	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP4	On2 Technologies	2001		Proprietary	VP4	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP5	On2 Technologies	2002		Proprietary	VP5	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP6	On2 Technologies	2003		Proprietary	VP6	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP7	On2 Technologies	2005		Proprietary	VP7	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP8	On2 Technologies (now owned by Google)	2008	1.1.0 (2012)	BSD-style	Patented, but freely licensed	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
VP9	Google	2013		BSD-style	Patented, but freely licensed	lossy/lossless	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
DNxHD	Avid Technology	2004		Proprietary	VC-3	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Cinema Craft Encoder SP2	Custom Technology Corporation	2000	1.00.01.09 (2009)^[16]	Proprietary	MPEG-1, MPEG-2	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
TMPGEnc Free Version	Pegasys Inc.	2001	2.525.64.184 (2008)^[17]	Proprietary	MPEG-1, MPEG-2	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Windows Media Encoder	Microsoft	1999	9 (2003) (WMV3 in FourCC)	Proprietary	WMV, VC-1, (in early versions MPEG-4 Part 2 and not MPEG-4 compliant MPEG-4v3, MPEG-4v2)	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Cinepak	Created by SuperMac, Inc. Currently maintained by Compression Technologies, Inc.^[18]	1991	1.10.0.26 (1999)	Proprietary	Unknown	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Indeo Video	Intel Corporation, currently offered by Ligos Corporation	1992	5.2	Proprietary	Indeo Video	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
TrueMotion S	The Duck Corporation	1995		Proprietary	TrueMotion S	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
RealVideo	RealNetworks	1997	RealVideo 10^[19]	Proprietary	H.263, RealVideo	lossy	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Huffyuv	Ben Rudiak-Gould	2000	2.1.1 (2003)^[20]	GNU GPL 2	none	Lossless	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Lagarith	Ben Greenwood	2004-10-04	1.3.27 (2011-12-08)^[21]	GNU GPL 2	none	Lossless	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
MainConcept	MainConcept GmbH	1993	8.8.0 (2011)	Proprietary	MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, H.263, VC-3, MPEG-4 Part 2, DV, MJPEG etc.	lossy	Yes^[22]	Yes^[23]^[24]	Unknown	Unknown	Yes^[25]
Elecard	Elecard	2008	G4 (2010)^[26]	Proprietary	MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVC	lossy	No	Yes^[26]	No	Yes^[26]	Yes^[26]
Codec	Creator/Maintainer	First public release date	Latest stable version	License	Patented compression formats	Compression method	OpenCL support	nVidia CUDA support	ATI Stream/AMD APP support	Intel AVX support	Intel Quick Sync Video support

^* The Xiph.Org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for everyone, for any purpose.^[27] ^* 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	Mac OS X	other Unix & Unix-like	Windows
3ivx	Yes	Yes	Yes
Blackbird	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cinepak	Yes	No	Yes
DivX	Yes	No	Yes
FFmpeg	Yes	Yes	Yes
RealVideo	Yes	Yes	Yes
Schrödinger (Dirac)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sorenson Video 3	Yes	No	Yes
Theora	Yes	Yes	Yes
x264	Yes	Yes	Yes
Xvid	Yes	Yes	Yes
Elecard	Yes	No	Yes

Technical details

Codec	Compression type	Basic algorithm	Highest supported bitrate	Highest supported resolution	Variable frame rate
Blackbird	lossy compression	Unknown	Unknown	384×288 (PAL), 320×240 (NTSC)	Yes
Cinepak	lossy compression	Vector quantization^[28]	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Dirac	lossy/lossless compression	Wavelet compression	Unlimited^[29]	Unlimited^[29]	Yes
Sorenson 3	lossy compression	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Theora	lossy compression	Discrete cosine transform	2 Gibit/s	1,048,560×1,048,560^[30]^[31]	Via chaining^[*]
RealVideo	lossy compression	Discrete cosine transform	Unknown	Unknown	Yes
Elecard	lossy compression	Unknown	Unlimited	16k	Yes

^* Theora streams with different frame rates can be chained in the same file, but each stream has a fixed frame rate.^[30]

Freely available codecs comparisons

List of freely available comparisons and their content description:

Name of comparison	Type of comparison	Date(s) of publication	List of compared codecs	Comments
Series of Doom9 codec comparisons	Series of subjective comparison of popular codecs	2002 2003 2005	DivX4.12, On2 VP3, XviD 1/25 and WMV8 and DivX5.01, XviD 3/27 and ON2 VP4 — at 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	Subjective comparison with convenient visualization
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.	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 (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 2009: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP codec), Dicas H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel IPP H.264, MainConcept H.264, x264 2010: XviD (MPEG-4 ASP codec), DivX H.264, Elecard H.264, Intel MediaSDK AVC/H.264, MainConcept H.264, Microsoft Expression, Encoder, Theora, x264	Detailed objective comparisons
Series of Lossless Video Codecs Comparison	Two size and time comparisons of lossless codecs (with lossless checking)	2004 Oct. 2007 Mar.	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	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.	DivX 5.2.1, DivX 4.12, DivX 3.22, MS MPEG-4 3688 v3, XviD 1.0.3, 3ivx D4 4.5.1, OpenDivX 0.3	Different versions of DivX were also compared. The Xvid results may be erroneous, as deblocking was disabled for it while used for DivX.
Subjective Comparison of Modern Video Codecs	Scientifically accurate subjective comparison using 50 experts and SAMVIQ methodology	2006 Feb.	DivX 6.0, Xvid 1.1.0, x264, WMV 9.0 (2 bitrates for every codec)	PSNR via VQM via SSIM comparison was also done
MPEG-2 Video Decoders Comparison	Objective MPEG-2 Decoders comparison	2006 May.	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 MPEG-2 Decoder	Objectly tested (100 times per stream) decoders "crash test" (test on damaged stream — like scratched DVD or satellite samples)
Codecs comparison	Personal subjective opinion	2003 Nov.	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, Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, XviD, 3ivx, Animation, Blackmagic 10-bit, Blackmagic 8-bit, Cinepak, DV, H.261, H.263, Motion-JPEG, MPEG-4 Video, PNG, Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3	Sometimes comparison is short (up to one text line per codec)
Evaluation of Dirac and Theora	Scientific paper	2009 Mar.	Dirac, Dirac Pro, Theora I, H.264, Motion JPEG2000 (the tested codecs are from Q2-2008)	Quite detailed comparison of software available in Q2-2008; However, a buggy version of ffmpeg2Theora was used
VP8 versus x264	Objective and subjective quality comparison of VP8 and x264	2010 Jun.	VP8, x264	VQM, SSIM and PSNR for 19 CIF video clips with bitrates of 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kbit/s

Notes and references

↑ Xiph.Org Foundation (2009) Theora development website - news, Retrieved 2009-10-06
1 2 Theora.org FAQ: what is the license for Theora?
1 2 Dirac Video Compression, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ x264 - a free h264/avc encoder, Retrieved on 2014-12-28
↑ x265 HEVC Encoder , Retrieved on 2015-12-07
↑ "Xvid.com". Retrieved 2015-12-27.
↑ FFmpeg.org, Retrieved on 2014-12-27
↑ FFavs, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ "DivX, Inc.". DivX, Inc. Retrieved 19 May 2011.
↑ http://labs.divx.com/term/HEVC
↑ VirtualDub VirtualDub documentation: codecs, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ FOURCC.org Video Codecs - Compressed Formats, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ Tom's Hardware (2001-10-22) A Tough Choice: DivX 3.20a Codec Still Better Than DivX 4.01 Codec, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ 3ivx, Retrieved on 2014-12-27
↑ Nero AG What is Nero Digital, Retrieved on 2009-08-08
↑ Custom Technology Corporation CINEMA CRAFT - Download, Retrieved on 2009-08-11
↑ Pegasys Inc. What Is New, Retrieved on 2009-08-11
↑ Compression Technologies, Inc., current maintainer of Cinepak
↑ RealNetworks Products - Codecs, Retrieved on 2009-08-07
↑ Huffyuv v2.1.1, Retrieved on 2009-08-09
↑ Lagarith Lossless Video Codec, Retrieved on 2014-03-04
↑
↑
↑
↑
1 2 3 4
↑ Theora.org FAQ: isn't VP3 a patented technology?
↑ Technical description of the Cinepak codec
1 2 Frame rate, resolution, etc. are coded as variable length data.
1 2 Theora format specification PDF (827 KB)
↑ Requires about 3 terabytes per uncompressed frame at maximum resolution (pg 37, Theora I Specification. March 7, 2006)

External links

Multimedia compression and container formats

Video
compression

ISO/IEC	MJPEG Motion JPEG 2000 MPEG-1 MPEG-2 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2/ASP Part 10/AVC MPEG-H Part 2/HEVC

ITU-T	H.120 H.261 H.262 H.263 H.264 H.265

SMPTE	VC-1 VC-2 VC-3 VC-5

Others	AOMedia Video Apple Video AVS Bink Cinepak Daala Dirac DV DVI FFV1 Huffyuv Indeo Microsoft Video 1 MSU Lossless Lagarith OMS Video Pixlet ProRes 422 ProRes 4444 QuickTime Animation Graphics RealVideo RTVideo SheerVideo Smacker Sorenson Video, Spark Theora Thor VP3 VP6 VP7 VP8 VP9 WMV XEB YULS

Audio
compression

ISO/IEC	MPEG-1 Layer III (MP3) MPEG-1 Layer II Multichannel MPEG-1 Layer I AAC HE-AAC AAC-LD MPEG Surround MPEG-4 ALS MPEG-4 SLS MPEG-4 DST MPEG-4 HVXC MPEG-4 CELP MPEG-D USAC MPEG-H 3D Audio

ITU-T	G.711 (A-law, µ-law) G.718 G.719 G.722 G.722.1 G.722.2 G.723 G.723.1 G.726 G.728 G.729 G.729.1

IETF	Opus iLBC

3GPP	AMR AMR-WB AMR-WB+ EVRC EVRC-B GSM-HR GSM-FR GSM-EFR

Others	ACELP AC-3 ALAC Asao ATRAC CELT Codec2 DRA DTS FLAC iSAC Monkey's Audio TTA True Audio MT9 Musepack OptimFROG OSQ QCELP RCELP RealAudio RTAudio SD2 SHN SILK Siren SMV Speex SVOPC TwinVQ VMR-WB Vorbis VSELP WavPack WMA MQA aptX

Image
compression

IEC, ISO, ITU-T,W3C,IETF	CCITT Group 4 JPEG JPEG 2000 JPEG XR Lossless JPEG JBIG JBIG2 PNG TIFF/EP TIFF/IT HEVC GIF TIFF

Others	APNG BPG DjVu EXR FLIF ICER MNG PGF QTVR WBMP WebP

Containers

ISO/IEC	MPEG-PS MPEG-TS ISO base media file format MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4) Motion JPEG 2000 MPEG-21 Part 9 MPEG media transport

ITU-T	H.222.0 T.802

Others	3GP and 3G2 AMV ASF AIFF AVI AU BPG Bink Smacker BMP DivX Media Format EVO Flash Video GXF IFF M2TS Matroska WebM MXF Ogg QuickTime File Format RatDVD RealMedia RIFF WAV MOD and TOD VOB, IFO and BUP

Collaborations

See Compression methods for methods and Compression software for codecs

Data compression methods

Lossless

Entropy type	Unary Arithmetic Golomb Huffman Adaptive Canonical Modified Range Shannon Shannon–Fano Shannon–Fano–Elias Tunstall Universal Exp-Golomb Fibonacci Gamma Levenshtein

Dictionary type	Byte pair encoding DEFLATE Lempel–Ziv LZ77 / LZ78 (LZ1 / LZ2) LZJB LZMA LZO LZRW LZS LZSS LZW LZWL LZX LZ4 Statistical

Other types	BWT CTW Delta DMC MTF PAQ PPM RLE

Audio

Concepts	Bit rate average (ABR) constant (CBR) variable (VBR) Companding Convolution Dynamic range Latency Nyquist–Shannon theorem Sampling Sound quality Speech coding Sub-band coding

Codec parts	A-law μ-law ACELP ADPCM CELP DPCM Fourier transform LPC LAR LSP MDCT Psychoacoustic model WLPC

Image

Concepts	Chroma subsampling Coding tree unit Color space Compression artifact Image resolution Macroblock Pixel PSNR Quantization Standard test image

Methods	Chain code DCT EZW Fractal KLT LP RLE SPIHT Wavelet

Video

Concepts	Bit rate average (ABR) constant (CBR) variable (VBR) Display resolution Frame Frame rate Frame types Interlace Video characteristics Video quality

Codec parts	Lapped transform DCT Deblocking filter Motion compensation

Theory

Compression formats
Compression software (codecs)

Data compression software

Archivers with
compression
(comparison)

Free software	7-Zip Archive Manager Ark Expander FreeArc Info-ZIP KGB Archiver PAQ PeaZip The Unarchiver (decompression only) tar Xarchiver Zipeg ZPAQ

Freeware	Filzip LHA StuffIt Expander (decompression only) TUGZip ZipGenius

Commercial	ARC ALZip Archive Utility ARJ BetterZip BulkZip JAR MacBinary PKZIP/SecureZIP PowerArchiver StuffIt WinAce WinRAR WinZip

Non-archiving
compressors

Generic	bzip2 compress gzip lzip lzop pack rzip Snappy XZ Utils

For code	UPX

Audio
compression
(comparison)

Lossy	Fraunhofer FDK AAC Nero AAC Codec Freeware Advanced Audio Coder (FAAC) Helix DNA Producer l3enc LAME TooLAME libavcodec libcelt libopus libspeex Musepack libvorbis Windows Media Encoder

Lossless	ALAC FLAC libavcodec Monkey's Audio mp4als OptimFROG Shorten TTA (True Audio) WavPack

Video
compression
(comparison)

Lossy

MPEG-4 ASP	3ivx DivX Nero Digital FFmpeg HDX4 Xvid

H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC	CoreAVC Blu-code DivX FFmpeg Nero Digital OpenH264 QuickTime x264

HEVC	DivX x265

Others	CineForm Cinepak Daala DNxHD Helix DNA Producer Indeo libavcodec Schrödinger (Dirac) SBC Sorenson VP7 libtheora libvpx Windows Media Encoder

Lossless

See also: compression methods and compression formats

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