Discussion About The Best Video Codecs

[electrfunch 0]

In your opinion what is the best video codec available in terms of video quality. Theoraticaly the best one will be H.264, also known as MPEG4-Layer 10, but I dont believe there is a stable and with the features that make that format better than MPEG-4 (remember that the famous XviD and Divx are MPEG-4 Simple Profile, there may be some MAIN Profile features).Another aspect that I believe to be verry important when deciding which is the best codec, is the processing complexity, on other words the processing power required to encode a video (the encoding is allways the more processing heavy process, the decoding has smaller processing complexity because we dont have to do the calculation of the motion vectors).

Edited November 30, 2005 by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG (see edit history)

[PureHeart 0]

My favorite is DivX codec. It can make small files with high quality. I riped a DVD to a CD before.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

same, DivX is currently the best and widely used. I've seen movie clips that were compressed in H.263, it's not bad and unstable, but it's not popular that's all...xboxrulz

[yordan 10]

first of all, the video codecs are used for compressing video things. so, the best vidoe codec for reading a compressed movie is the one which was using for compressing the movie. You need Xvid codec if you want to read a Xvid video, you need DivX codecs if you want to read a DivX movie.Personnally, for my own purposes I use DivX 4.1.2 codecs, because at that moment this codec was free. I didn't switch to DivX 5 because the pro version is not free any more.Regards Yordan

[Grafitti 0]

And NOW it is. Dr.Divx 2 is open source, freeware, and available for download from the divx website. Only thing is it's missing a couple dll files but you can download them anywhere. It seems to be even better than the previous paid version.

[kaputnik 0]

I frequently use various video codecs to squeeze size, and to enhance video. But, that's while re-compressing from an already digitized source.. If you're talking about professional video editing; then, after dumping your DV onto your computer, you're best off editing first in the raw format (as dumped from your camera/ other video source) and when you compress, you'd want to try out Apple's quicktime (.mov format). The file sizes are massive - even after compression, but the quality is impressive (saving as PAL format tends to bring down the quality a notch in my personal opinion). There all professional video editing software supports exporting of raw DV to .mov. However, if you're bound by monitary restrictions, then you'd want to use DivX, XvID or other codecs available that will do a very good job on the quality front with about a fifth of the space utilized. A great software to use for converting and compressing video is an opensource source software called VirtualDub.

[foolakadugie 0]

I normally render stuff out in Soreson 3. It does a pretty good job at compressing while keeping the image quality very good. Although it doesn't compress as much as other ones, it yeilds much better quality than alot of them. Divx is ok, but it tends to do some weird things to the image especially with fast motion. Partso of the video where things are moving quickly, Divx comines multiple frames all into one creating a messy "trail" and also make some big pixel thing sometimes.

[yordan 10]

especially with fast motion

This was an old problem, with DivX 3. This problem disappeared with DivX 4 and DivX 5.Yordan

[unimatrix 0]

I work at a video production company. It really depends on what your rendering and for what kind of distribution. Now 95% of our stuff is for DVD. Sometimes we do trailers for people to place on websites. We use Sorenson 3 in a quicktime (.mov) wrapper. If you look at QuickTime movie trailers, that is still the codec of choice for online movie trailers.We like QuicktTime because it's a pretty universal format. Windows and Mac users have no problems and linux can get Quicktime content to play if they know what they are doing. Again, we are a nearly 100% Apple shop even to the point where we are using Shake more and more over After Effects. I have never been a great fan of Divx because it requires people to download the Codec fist. Granted you have to download QuickTime player for the .mov, but most computers come with Quicktime, and most users get it with iTunes now in the PC. The number of general users that will go out and download a Codec to watch a trailer, especially for our client's market base, is very small. Since most of the video's we produce are marketing related for businesses, they use these sales videos to try and get more clients and often times the people looking at these videos are not techies and don't even know what a Codec is let alone have admin access to install it. If you say, "You need Apple QuickTime Player", most people either already have it or at least know what it is and most system Admins will allow the program to be installed. Then there was the whole thing about Divx and OSX not always getting along all that well too...

[firefoxsilver9 0]

No one could have tried "all" of the coverters on the market, and therefore any opinion one may have would be for the specific one s/he have tried, and then the opinion would be purely subjective. What may be tolerable to him/her may not be to you. Then what's the point of asking?For example, I consider VCD video tolerable, where as someone like, say... Guns1inger demand nothing less than DVD quality video.

[unimatrix 0]

As I stated before, working in the video business, I have tried a lot of different formats. Yes, some can be subjective, but most codecs can be compared side by side on many technical levels. Why we use Quictime W/Sorenson 3 is that it offers a good trade off between quality and file size for web viewing, plus most people already have quicktime installed on their computers. Divx can deliver similar (arguably better) quailty files at a smaller file size, however one has to download the Codec and the Codec and Macintosh doesn't always play nice with each other. To say I've tried them all, maybe not, but we have the capablity of rendering into 388 different Codecs at work. We are always tring to get the best trade off between file size and quality and there are a lot of discussions between folks in the industry itself. So sometimes, it can be subject, but most often times the discussions get to be extremely technical.