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VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

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Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#11

Post by afhof »

Scaevolus wrote: post #4

DarkShikari (x264 dev) has blogged about VP8 a few times: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/category/vp8 "The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8" http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

His blog is very insightful. There is also another great post where he talks about how to cheat on video comparison tests ( http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 ). One of the things brought up in there is for still frame comparisons. If the frame came from an I frame rather than a B* or P frame in the output video, the test will be unfair.

*VP8 doesn't have B frames, similar to the h.264 baseline profile.

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#12

Post by 0x09 »

shmerl wrote: post #7

Let's see how Daala and VP9 work out. Something should break the domination of closed formats, and MPEG-LA obviously plan to extend their grip on the market with H.265, since patents on H.264 are going to expire. Introducing an updated format will start this whole patent lock from the beginning.

Closed formats haven't dominated since the heyday of RealMedia in the late 1990s.

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#13

Post by shmerl »

0x09 wrote: post #12
shmerl wrote: post #7

Let's see how Daala and VP9 work out. Something should break the domination of closed formats, and MPEG-LA obviously plan to extend their grip on the market with H.265, since patents on H.264 are going to expire. Introducing an updated format will start this whole patent lock from the beginning.

Closed formats haven't dominated since the heyday of RealMedia in the late 1990s.

Support for H.264 in the hardware is commonplace, while support for VP8 is limited to few new SoCs and is virtually absent in any video dedicated hardware. You don't see it as a domination of closed formats?

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#14

Post by afhof »

shmerl wrote: post #10
Osiris wrote: post #2

Having done a lot of video encoding myself, I've found that H.264 offers the best quality, especially at lower bit rates. I really do hope that VP9 can offer the quality of H.265. VP8 just wasn't good enough to compete against H.264.

No, the point is it is good enough , even if in some cases it can't be as good because it has to work around software patents. Theora indeed can't compete in comparison, but VP8 surely can.

Being good enough also depends on the context that the video will be used in. For example, I have an HTML5 video site where closer to 100% of the audience is either FF or Chrome. Both support VP8 out of the box, which means I only have to keep one copy of the video to serve to all users. If I had to target more browsers, such as Safari or IE, I would have to keep two copies of every video in order to work on all browsers (or worse, use flash as a work around).

I am okay with the minor loss in quality, just for the ease of managing a lot of videos and a lot of disk space.

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#15

Post by shmerl »

afhof wrote: post #14
shmerl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point is it is good enough , even if in some cases it can't be as good because it has to work around software patents. Theora indeed can't compete in comparison, but VP8 surely can.

Being good enough also depends on the context that the video will be used in. For example, I have an HTML5 video site where closer to 100% of the audience is either FF or Chrome. Both support VP8 out of the box, which means I only have to keep one copy of the video to serve to all users. If I had to target more browsers, such as Safari or IE, I would have to keep two copies of every video in order to work on all brow…

Those who really lack support for WebM are mobile users who don't have dedicated hardware decoder and those who use crippled browsers like mobile Safari or mobile IE. Desktop users (at least in case of IE, not sure what's the story with Safari these days) can install needed plugins and DirectShow filters to support WebM. But the lack of dedicated hardware decoding in mobile SoCs remains a serious problem, since even when the browser supports VP8 decoding in software, it would be a degraded experience, especially power consumption wise.

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#16

Post by shmerl »

ck2 wrote: post #6
SG- wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand, Betamax had superior quality, but in this case this article shows that h264 has more detail at the same bit rate combined with much faster encoding.

Does your standalone device have vp8? All bluray devices can play h264 streams but almost never vp8. Of course as everything switches to android this will change completely by the end of the decade, but for streaming in 2013, h264 is the better investment. Once they move to h265 vs vp9 the point is moot but that won't be common for at least five years. The encoding requirements for those streams will also be signific…

SoC manufacturers slowly add VP8 support. But it's limited to the newest models at most. So it's coming but not as rapidly as you could wish.

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#17

Post by Hupo »

shmerl wrote: post #13
0x09 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closed formats haven't dominated since the heyday of RealMedia in the late 1990s.

Support for H.264 in the hardware is commonplace, while support for VP8 is limited to few new SoCs and is virtually absent in any video dedicated hardware. You don't see it as a domination of closed formats?

H.264 isn't exactly "closed" per se - the standard itself is freely available[1], which is why we have great free and open source encoders and decoders for it. What you mean by "closed" is most likely just "patent-encumbered", which it most certainly is and which affects anyone wanting to use it commercially (at the moment you can use it freely for non-commercial purposes on the internet, but this may or may not change in the future).

[1] http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201201-I/en

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#18

Post by shmerl »

Hupo wrote: post #17
shmerl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support for H.264 in the hardware is commonplace, while support for VP8 is limited to few new SoCs and is virtually absent in any video dedicated hardware. You don't see it as a domination of closed formats?

H.264 isn't exactly "closed" per se - the standard itself is freely available[1], which is why we have great free and open source encoders and decoders for it. What you mean by "closed" is most likely just "patent-encumbered", which it most certainly is and which affects anyone wanting to use it commercially (at the moment you can use it freely for non-commercial purposes on the internet, but this may or may not chan…

By closed I mean not available for free use and distribution, for example in open source projects which can't pay any royalties. May be saying free format would sound more clear, since you are right, closed is a bit ambiguous, as it can also mean a format without published specification which needs to be reverse engineered to be used.

Also, I don't think that H.264 forbids only commercial use. Can you freely distribute their decoders and encoders? What about putting them in hardware for non commercial use?

Re: VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

#20

Post by sounds »

Hupo wrote: post #8
Scaevolus wrote: post #4

DarkShikari (x264 dev) has blogged about VP8 a few times: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/category/vp8 "The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8" http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

That he has. My test clip choice was inspired by him[1], and I also link to another blog post of his[2] in the conclusion. That VP8 blog post is almost three years old now, though, and the comment I'm replying to in my article claimed that VP8 is better than H.264 "at this point". This is why I did my test with the latest and greatest encoders available for both formats today. [1] http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph…

I think it would be interesting to do a follow-up comparison h264 vs VP8 for mobile. 1080p vbr targetting ~7 Mbps, 480p vbr targetting ~2.5 Mbps, etc.

It's important to explore the space a bit for discussion's sake.

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