Which is the best video file format?
- Thread starter Deepak
- Start date
Quicktime 7 is not good, yes. But it's integrated, and can be played everywhere. VLC player is not good enough, especially when your computer is not fast enough. Nero Digital is only available under Windows.
I've tried using x264 with CE-Quicktime profile, but it's certainly not user friendly, though x264 is a very good codec (I transcoded a DVD video to H.264 2Mbps using x264, and the result is very impressive).
I've tried using x264 with CE-Quicktime profile, but it's certainly not user friendly, though x264 is a very good codec (I transcoded a DVD video to H.264 2Mbps using x264, and the result is very impressive).
Here's a codec test at doom9, its from 2005 though.
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm
I`d go with Xvid anyday. Any comparison I read placed it around or above MS WMV, only beaten by the h264 codecs.
Plus it has quite good software & Hardware support, many DVD-Player support it, you can even play it on PS2 with Homebrew Progs, open source, free. Try playing WMV on Linux (particulary non-Intel-Processors).
Once x264 gets more mature it should be the better option though.
Plus it has quite good software & Hardware support, many DVD-Player support it, you can even play it on PS2 with Homebrew Progs, open source, free. Try playing WMV on Linux (particulary non-Intel-Processors).
Once x264 gets more mature it should be the better option though.
As far as quality goes it's not horrible, but it is dog slow and extremely cumbersome to work with using common tools. Doom9.org did a thorough codec-shootout last year and not much have changed drastically since then.radeonic2 said:
Isn't 2Mbps a bit too generous for a SD DVD transcode using the H.264 codec, especially if it's a 2.35:1 anamorphic encoding?pcchen said:
Have you tried H.264 at 1Mbps or 700-900kbps? I don't do as much as encoding now as I did previously, but for DVD transcodes I was getting fairly transparent encodes with XviD and some custom quantisation matrixes from Doom9 at about 1200-1400kbps with the original AC-3 audio. At 2Mbps, XviD should produce excellent results and I would of thought the significantly more computationally complex and efficient H.264 codec would cope with much less bitrate, unless that particular implementation isn't that optimised.
BrynS said:Have you tried H.264 at 1Mbps or 700-900kbps? I don't do as much as encoding now as I did previously, but for DVD transcodes I was getting fairly transparent encodes with XviD and some custom quantisation matrixes from Doom9 at about 1200-1400kbps with the original AC-3 audio. At 2Mbps, XviD should produce excellent results and I would of thought the significantly more computationally complex and efficient H.264 codec would cope with much less bitrate, unless that particular implementation isn't that optimised.
IMHO at 2Mbps both H.264 and MPEG-4 ASP (such as XviD) already shows some slight differences from typical 8Mbps MPEG-2, mainly lost of some details. At 1Mbps or lower, H.264 performs better than MPEG-4 ASP but both are not "equivalent" to 8Mbps MPEG-2, as the differences are very obvious.
It's generally accepted that H.264's coding efficiency is about twice as MPEG-2, that is, in theory, a 4Mbps H.264 should be about the same as 8Mbps MPEG-2. So I'm surprised by the performance of x264 in 2Mbps as the loses are quite small to my eyes.
For noisy sources (such as recording from my poor cable TV), H.264 seems perform better than XviD even at 2Mbps.
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