by RadicalEd0 » Sun Jan 26, 2003 2:33 am
ok, tests are finished.
codecs tested:
DivX 5.03: 2 and 6 passes - 13,658 kb and 13,666 kb respectivley
XviD (latest Koepi cvs snapshot): 2 passes - 13,956 kb
3viX D4: only has one pass - 14,332 kb
DivX 3.11 SBC: 3 passes - 14,358 kb
Windows Media Video 9: 2 passes - 14,339 kb
RealVideo 9: 2 passes - 14,630 kb
clip used: frame 1307 - 3870 of Mission Improbable. 24fps, 512x384, 1024 kbps vbr used in all cases
both virtualdub and codecs with respective decoder filters set to max post processing for analysis
DivX 5.03, both 2 and 6 passes, actually surprised me. There was significantly less blocking and ringing than XviD in Vdub, instead areas which would have blocked took on an almost postprocessing esque muddiness. However it did look better than XviD's blocks. With full post processing however XviD caught up and was on par with the 6 pass DivX encode.
I was a little dissapointed in XviD in that as I mentioned there was some pretty noticable blocking and noise artifacts. Post processing cleared them up, but, I'm not in any condition to go around using 100% post processing on my 1ghz machine for normal viewing.
3vix started out good but got progressivley worse. Eventually it turned into an all out block fest that was uglier than the XviD by a good amount. Postprocessing did a good job of getting rid of the blocks, but also made the image kind of screwy, as in, not much better than blocky artifacts.
DivX 3.11, not as much noticable blocking as XviD or 3viX here, however it made up for that in a lot of mosquito noise. Postprocessing did an OK job of blurring this out but still wasnt great overall.
WM9, for all the claims made by M$ about this I'm not really impressed. Since WM is directly postprocessed, the only comparison was with the other codec's postprocessing, in which case it was sharper but also noticably blockier than XviD postprocessed. It holds a candle to Real9 in that it is a bit sharper but again it loses out in that it still has significant blocking.
RV9, I know I'm a RM whore, but honestly and objectively Real did do the best job here. Much sharper than XviD postprocessed, but with no noticable blocking or ringing. Slightly sharper than DivX 6pass with post, yet still with less leftover artifacts. Real stuff always looks sort of like its been run through 2dcleaner, as opposed to just being blurred like most postprocessing does, which is in part why it works so well with anime.
Overall I'd have to rank it like this:
1 - RV9
2 - DivX 5.03
3 - XviD
4 - WMV9
5 - DivX 3.11
6 - 3viX
not surpisingly, 3viX is last, and RV9 is first. The defunct DivX 3.11 is second to last. The upsets are in between. There was no fine line between divx 5.03, XviD, and wm9, it came down to one shot where a plane of color was more noisy in WM9. XviD came in after DivX due mainly to the excess blocking out of post. ffdshow's post turned out much worse than DivX 5's, with it xvid was under wm9. However with the divx 5 decoder 5.03 and xvid were very very similar.
So basically RV9 still rocks, XviD is still l33test, DivX 5.03 is a bit better quality than XviD, 3vix and WMV still suck and divx 3.11 is still old
Well I hope this info is useful somehow to someone because it took me like a fucking hour and a half to write it all :/