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.
Technical details
- 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 publication |
List of compared codecs |
Comments |
Series of Doom9 codec comparisons |
Series of subjective comparison of popular codecs |
|
- 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 (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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
VP8, x264 |
VQM, SSIM and PSNR for 19 CIF video clips with bit-rates of 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kbit/s |
|