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MSU Video Codecs Comparison 2021 Part 3: 4K

Sixteen Annual Video-Codecs Comparison by MSU

Video group head: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
Project head: Dr. Dmitriy Kulikov
Measurements, analysis: Dr. Mikhail Erofeev,
Anastasia Antsiferova,
Egor Sklyarov,
Alexander Yakovenko,
Nickolay Safonov,
Alexander Gushin,
Nikita Alutis
compression.ru Lomonosov
Moscow State University (MSU)
Graphics and Media Lab
Dubna International
State University
Institute for Information
Transmission Problems,
Russian Academy of Science

News

  • 20.04.2022 Release of the comparison

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Results


  • The results below are based solely on quality scores and do not take into account encoding speed
  • Encoders with scores closer than 1% share one place
All standards
Slow (1 fps) Fast (30 fps)
Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1
BVC2 (other),
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC),
BVC1 (HEVC)
Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC),
Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC),
BVC1 (HEVC)
Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1
BVC2 (other)
BVC1 (HEVC)
Best encoder 8-bit
Y-VMAF 0.6.1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 8-bit
Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1
Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC),
Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1
Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 10-bit
Y-VMAF 0.6.1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best encoder 10-bit
Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)


HEVC & AV1 standards
Slow (1 fps) Fast (30 fps)
Best HEVC encoder, 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best AV1 encoder, 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)
QAV1 (AV1)
Best AV1 encoder, 8-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1
Tencent TXAV1 (AV1), XAV1 (AV1)
QAV1 (AV1)
Best HEVC encoder, 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Tencent V265 (HEVC)
Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1
Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)
QAV1 (AV1), SVT-AV1 (AV1)
Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1
Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)
QAV1 (AV1)
Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1
XAV1 (AV1)
SVT-AV1 (AV1)
* - YUV-VMAF was calculated as VMAF for all colour-planes (Y, U, V) following the same methodology as YUV-SSIM, YUV-PSNR and other metrics.

The biggest number of codecs took part in comparison of Slow encoding (1 fps). The winners vary for different objective quality metrics. The participants were rated using BSQ-rate (enhanced BD-rate) scores [1].




[1] A. Zvezdakova, D. Kulikov, S. Zvezdakov, D. Vatolin, "BSQ-rate: a new approach for video-codec performance comparison and drawbacks of current solutions," 2020.

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Use cases Slow (1 fps), Fast (30 fps) (partially) Slow (1 fps), Fast (30 fps)
Number of test sequences 5 25
Test video descriptions
Basic codec info
Test videos download
Encoders presets description
PDF report 99 pages 103 pages
HTML report 234 interactive charts 15000+ interacive charts
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Participated codecs


Codec name Use cases Standard Version
1 Reference x265
MulticoreWare, Inc.
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 10-bit
H.265/HEVC 3.5+1-f0c1022b6, Windows
2 BVC1
Bytedance Inc.
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit
HEVC V2, Windows
3 BVC2
Bytedance Inc.
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit
Other V2, Windows
4 vo265
Zhenyu Liu
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit HEVC 1.0, Linux
5 MainConcept HEVC
MainConcept GmbH
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 10-bit
HEVC 13.1, Windows
6 QAV1
iQIYI Inc.
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 10-bit
AV1 v2.2, Linux
7 rav1e
The rav1e contributors
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit AV1 0.5.0-alpha (p20210518), Windows
8 SVT-AV1
Open Visual Cloud
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 10-bit
AV1 v0.8.6, Windows
9 SVT-HEVC
Open Visual Cloud
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit
HEVC 1.5.1, Windows
10 SVT-VP9
Open Visual Cloud
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit
VP9 0.3.0, Windows
11 Tencent V265
Tencent
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 10-bit
HEVC -, Linux
12 XAV1
X Man
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit
AV1 0.1, Linux
13 Tencent266 v0.1
Tencent
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit
VVC 0.1, Windows
14 Tencent266 v0.2
Tencent
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit
VVC 0.2, Windows
15 Tencent TXAV1
Tencent
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit
AV1 -, Linux
16 VVenC
Fraunhofer HHI
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Slow (1 fps) 10-bit
VVC v1.0.0, Linux
17 x264
x264 project
Slow (1 fps) 8-bit,
Fast (30 fps) 8-bit
AVC r3065-ae03d92, Windows

Comparison Rules


4K codec testing objectives

The main goal of this report it the presentation of a comparative evaluation of the quality of new HEVC codecs and codecs of other standards using objective measures of assessment. The comparison was done using settings provided by the developers of each codec. Nevertheless, we required all presets to satisfy minimum speed requirement on the particular use case.

Test Hardware Characteristics

  • CPU: Intel Socket 1151 Core i7 8700K (Coffee Lake) (3.7Ghz, 6C12T, TDP 95W)
  • Mainboard: ASRock Z370M Pro4
  • RAM: Crucial CT16G4DFD824A 2x16GB (totally 32 GB) DIMM DDR4 2400MHz CL15
  • OS: Windows 10 x64, Linux (Ubuntu 20.4)

For this platform we considered four key use cases with different speed requirements:

  • Fast 8-bit: UHD, 30fps
  • Slow 8-bit: UHD, 1fps
  • Fast 10-bit: UHD-10bit, 30fps
  • Slow 10-bit: UHD-10bit, 1fps

See more on Call For Codecs 2021 page

25 video sequences at 4K resolution were used for tests: 18 video sequences had 8-bit color depth and 7 video sequences had 10-bit color depth. Note: we used technically 10-bit videos for evaluation, but the colours in the videos themselves do not utilize wide luminance range (they are not HDR).


Codec Analysis and Tuning for Codec Developers and Codec Users


Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

  • 17+ years working in the area of video codec analysis and tuning using objective quality metrics and subjective comparisons.
  • 30+ reports of video codec comparisons and analysis (H.265, H.264, AV1, VP9, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, decoders' error recovery).
  • Methods and algorithms for codec comparison and analysis development, separate codec's features and codec's options analysis.

Strong and Weak Points of Your Codec

  • Deep encoder parts analysis (ME, RC on GOP, mode decision, etc).
  • Weak and strong points for your encoder and complete information about encoding quality on different content types.
  • Encoding Quality improvement by the pre and post filtering (including technologies licensing).

Independent Codec Estimation Comparing to Other Codecs for Different Use-cases

  • Comparative analysis of your encoder and other encoders.
  • We have direct contact with many codec developers.
  • You will know place of your encoder between other newest well-known encoders (compare encoding quality, speed, bitrate handling, etc.).

Encoder Features Implementation Optimality Analysis

We perform encoder features effectiveness (speed/quality trade-off) analysis that could lead up to 30% increase in the speed/quality characteristics of your codec. We can help you to tune your codec and find best encoding parameters.

Thanks


Special thanks to the following contributors of our previous comparisons
Apple Google Intel NVidia
Huawei AMD Adobe Tencent
Zoom video communications Facebook Inc. Netflix Alibaba
KDDI R&D labs Dolby Tata Elxsi Octasic
Qualcomm Voceweb Elgato Telecast
ATI MainConcept Vitec dicas

Contact Information

We appreciate any feedback on our comparison


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Last updated: 12-May-2022


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Project sponsored by YUVsoft Corp.

Project supported by MSU Graphics & Media Lab