Web video codecs H.264, VP6, VC-1 compared

Coursedesign wrote on 7/9/2008, 9:27 AM
Jan Ozer at Digital Content Producer has written an interesting web codec comparison.

As usual, it is important to think through what the results actually mean.

For example, he finds that VC-1 has placed last in every comparison he has made since 2005, and says that he got the settings for the MS' Expression Encoder he used from Microsoft's encoding guru Ben Waggoner.

I can't help wondering if there are better implementations of VC-1 than in that product.

Still, most people will be more interested in which codec was the winner by a wide margin, and the only question then will be in what tools you can get this performance.

On2 just announced a new VP6 version with "40% improvement," and this was also tested (with very good results).

Comments

Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/9/2008, 9:52 AM
From what I could see, h.264 still won overall and is still the standard for me since it can be played in Flash Player by using QTIndexSwapper to get them to progressively stream properly.

In addition, there's no need to go out and purchase yet another application like On2's Flix Pro with the updated VP6 codec. In my experience, the h.264 file sizes aren't appreciably larger than an equivalent flv file from what I can see for footage quality.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
Coursedesign wrote on 7/9/2008, 10:53 AM
There is no question that h.264 is the top choice right now, but it's good to have options.
riredale wrote on 7/9/2008, 12:00 PM
Okay, so how do I take advantage of H264? Say I want to replace my old Flash video clips on my webpages with new Flash clips using the new technology. What would be the methodology? Would I use the Carbon Coder mentioned by Jan in his article? Would webpage viewers have to jump through hoops in order to see the new video, or just update their Flash players to the latest version? What bitrate reduction should I expect for equivalent quality when compared to the older format? If I ran my old clips at 1,000Kb/sec, would m264 reduce that to, say, 500?

As an aside, the previous article mentioned by Jan is also very interesting. Flash now has almost 90% of the broadcast-website market, and Quicktime and Real, if offered at all, are included just as an option, and never as standalone. Bitrates are inching up, with 500Kb/sec apparently a common value.
Coursedesign wrote on 7/9/2008, 12:36 PM
Which codec did you use for your old Flash clips?

If it was VP6, I wouldn't bother unless it was truly business critical.

If it was Sorenson, use Squeeze Pro 5 or Adobe Flash CS3 to reencode the source footage in H.264 with the top MainConcept encoder (which seems to be crippled in Vegas?).

You won't be using Carbon Coder unless you are prepared to fork over $5,000 + tax.

Bit rate reduction depends on a lot of factors including the motion and frame content. And which older format?

Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/9/2008, 2:05 PM
riredale - I wrote up a how to on getting h.264 clips to play in Flash Player - you can view the how to on solovj.com here

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com