Comparison of Video Codecs - Freely Available Codecs Comparisons

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 was 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 bit-rates of 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kbit/s

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