11 ms·

VP8 vs H.264 – Which One is Better?

30 points by Hupo 14y ago

Osiris 14y ago
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.
- shmerl 14y ago
  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.
  - afhof 14y ago
    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.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      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.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Given how cable looks compared to over the air HDTV, the coming of 4k, and satellite channels even h.264 isn't good enough. VP8 won't be and h.265 is the industries answer. I would expect trouble with the adoption of VP9 given Google's moves with Mortorola's patents.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      > I would expect trouble with the adoption of VP9 given Google's moves with Mortorola's patents. How exactly? There is no indication that Google wants to make VP9 patent encumbered, since their whole idea behind VP8 was to enable high quality open video codec for the Web and beyond. If VP9 will be their natural next step, it will be open as well. If Daala comes soon enough too - it will be another option.
      - protomyth 14y ago
        There are patents covering VP8 and I would bet VP9 also is covered.
        shmerl 14y ago
        That's true, and Google explicitly granted their free usage, thus the codec is open in all senses of the word. I'd expect the same story with VP9. So what's your point? http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/
        protomyth 14y ago
        Google went back on what Motorola had already pledged when they bought them. What assurance does anyone have that Google won't do the same again?
        shmerl 14y ago
- shortsightedsid 14y ago
  Video encoders have a number of tools. It really depends on what tools you have enabled. The standard itself doesn't specify how an encoder behaves. That leaves a lot of room for innovation on encoders. End of the day, the qp/bitrate ratio you get is encoder implementation dependent and not sometime that's specific to the standard. This is the part where most of the patents exist.
ck2 14y ago
Considering the sheer number of devices with h.264, it's like saying betamax is superior while everyone only has vhs.
- SG- 14y ago
  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.
  - ck2 14y ago
    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 significant.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      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.
    - taligent 14y ago
      > Of course as everything switches to android this will change completely by the end of the decade That's hilarious.
      - ck2 14y ago
        You disagree that a free, solid OS like android with a commercial marketplace like the google play store will become ubiquitous? I mean we are reaching the point where a $20 device can just plug right into a hdmi port and you have a full blown pc with standardized wifi and bluetooth support. By 2018 they will be $10 and sold at gas stations. When that happens you can have any codec upgrade you want as long as it can still decode on that hardware spec in realtime.
Scaevolus 14y ago
DarkShikari (x264 dev) has blogged about VP8 a few times: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/category/vp8 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/category/vp8 "The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8" http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377
- Hupo 14y ago
  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.php?t=154430 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 [2] http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472
  - sounds 14y ago
    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.
    - gillianseed 14y ago
      I think it would be more interesting to compare VP9 with HEVC (h.265), I know the VP9 experimental branch can easily be checked out and tested, but I don't know of where to find HEVC encoders (although I'm sure they exist with some Google fu). Obviously there are problems with testing unfinished implementations, as: A) they are generally VERY slow given that there's little optimization during the development phase, and these next gen video codecs are more demanding than the previous generation B) a great deal of the quality comes from fine-tuning during implementation, not from the specification. For example x264 is a 'best-in-class' implementation of h.264, readily beating many other implementations of the very same specification. As such, this fine-tuning is not likely to exist until the codec implementations mature, which likely means that what is available now of HEVC/VP9 serves only as very rough estimates. Would still interesting though :)
shmerl 14y ago
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.
- 0x09 14y ago
  Closed formats haven't dominated since the heyday of RealMedia in the late 1990s.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    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?
    - Hupo 14y ago
      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 http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201201-I/en
      - shmerl 14y ago
        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?
nullc 14y ago
Testing with a single not very representative clip is a poor idea, See the comment on the github: https://gist.github.com/4645784#comment-756444 https://gist.github.com/4645784#comment-756444
- Hupo 14y ago
  >not very representative clip I chose the clip based on what Dark_Shikari (x264 developer) had to say about it[1]: It shouldn't bias too heavily towards any one encoder like many of the other standard test clips will: a. It's relatively high motion, so it won't bias heavily against encoders without B-frames or qpel (as, say, mobcal does). b. It's not so high motion that it would cripple video formats that don't support motion vectors longer than 16 pixels (e.g. Theora). c. It's not something that benefits an unreasonably large amount from some of x264's algorithms (which is why I picked this and not parkrun). [1] http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 I could have done multiple test encodes, sure, but the problem in this case was that downloading several gigabytes of raw source material isn't exactly instant. And even if I tested with multiple clips, I doubt the conclusion would be that much different.
  - nullc 14y ago
    Because of texture this clip benefits enormously from 8x8 transforms (as well as substantially from an activity masking aware encoder). On an intra frame in prior testing Theora did enormously better than VP8 on this clip for these reasons. If your test was to compare an intraframe between vp8 / baseline h264 / and Theora, you would have concluded Theora was the best by a wide margin. But this would be an erroneous conclusion. And sure, perhaps you'd get the same result on other clips. Over high-profile H264 the only obvious format feature that come to mind that could really let VP8 get ahead are the 'truemotion' intra-predictor and creative use of the synthetic reference frame (though I suppose the vp8 developers might have other suggestions) and I'd expect those features to only be big wins on a small number of clips so it wouldn't be hard to miss the cases where VP8 really shines over high profile h264. But you (or I) could have said that without doing the test at all, and there would be 100% fewer clueless people going around claiming that something was proven here that wasn't. Your opinion (or mine) is a fine thing, but it's not proper to launder an opinion as fact by dressing it up in an inadequate test.
Steko 14y ago
Oh look another article that's been flagged into oblivion by zealots. {currently at the bottom of page 4 when by pts it should still be in the top 10)
ksec 14y ago
"While I'd love a patent- and royalty-free video format to offer the highest quality compression you can find, I wouldn't hold my breath for one." I wonder why couldn't they allow software usage ( Encoder and Decoder ) to be free. And only collect royalty on Hardware, and Industry Production use.

30 points by Hupo 14y ago

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.

shmerl 14y ago
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.
- afhof 14y ago
  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.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    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.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Given how cable looks compared to over the air HDTV, the coming of 4k, and satellite channels even h.264 isn't good enough. VP8 won't be and h.265 is the industries answer. I would expect trouble with the adoption of VP9 given Google's moves with Mortorola's patents.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    > I would expect trouble with the adoption of VP9 given Google's moves with Mortorola's patents. How exactly? There is no indication that Google wants to make VP9 patent encumbered, since their whole idea behind VP8 was to enable high quality open video codec for the Web and beyond. If VP9 will be their natural next step, it will be open as well. If Daala comes soon enough too - it will be another option.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      There are patents covering VP8 and I would bet VP9 also is covered.
      - shmerl 14y ago
        That's true, and Google explicitly granted their free usage, thus the codec is open in all senses of the word. I'd expect the same story with VP9. So what's your point? http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/
        protomyth 14y ago
        Google went back on what Motorola had already pledged when they bought them. What assurance does anyone have that Google won't do the same again?
        shmerl 14y ago
shortsightedsid 14y ago
Video encoders have a number of tools. It really depends on what tools you have enabled. The standard itself doesn't specify how an encoder behaves. That leaves a lot of room for innovation on encoders. End of the day, the qp/bitrate ratio you get is encoder implementation dependent and not sometime that's specific to the standard. This is the part where most of the patents exist.

ck2 14y ago

Considering the sheer number of devices with h.264, it's like saying betamax is superior while everyone only has vhs.

SG- 14y ago
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.
- ck2 14y ago
  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 significant.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    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.
  - taligent 14y ago
    > Of course as everything switches to android this will change completely by the end of the decade That's hilarious.
    - ck2 14y ago
      You disagree that a free, solid OS like android with a commercial marketplace like the google play store will become ubiquitous? I mean we are reaching the point where a $20 device can just plug right into a hdmi port and you have a full blown pc with standardized wifi and bluetooth support. By 2018 they will be $10 and sold at gas stations. When that happens you can have any codec upgrade you want as long as it can still decode on that hardware spec in realtime.

Scaevolus 14y ago

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

Hupo 14y ago
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.php?t=154430 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 [2] http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472
- sounds 14y ago
  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.
  - gillianseed 14y ago
    I think it would be more interesting to compare VP9 with HEVC (h.265), I know the VP9 experimental branch can easily be checked out and tested, but I don't know of where to find HEVC encoders (although I'm sure they exist with some Google fu). Obviously there are problems with testing unfinished implementations, as: A) they are generally VERY slow given that there's little optimization during the development phase, and these next gen video codecs are more demanding than the previous generation B) a great deal of the quality comes from fine-tuning during implementation, not from the specification. For example x264 is a 'best-in-class' implementation of h.264, readily beating many other implementations of the very same specification. As such, this fine-tuning is not likely to exist until the codec implementations mature, which likely means that what is available now of HEVC/VP9 serves only as very rough estimates. Would still interesting though :)

shmerl 14y ago

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.

0x09 14y ago
Closed formats haven't dominated since the heyday of RealMedia in the late 1990s.
- shmerl 14y ago
  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?
  - Hupo 14y ago
    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 http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201201-I/en
    - shmerl 14y ago
      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?

nullc 14y ago

Testing with a single not very representative clip is a poor idea, See the comment on the github: https://gist.github.com/4645784#comment-756444 https://gist.github.com/4645784#comment-756444

Hupo 14y ago
>not very representative clip I chose the clip based on what Dark_Shikari (x264 developer) had to say about it[1]: It shouldn't bias too heavily towards any one encoder like many of the other standard test clips will: a. It's relatively high motion, so it won't bias heavily against encoders without B-frames or qpel (as, say, mobcal does). b. It's not so high motion that it would cripple video formats that don't support motion vectors longer than 16 pixels (e.g. Theora). c. It's not something that benefits an unreasonably large amount from some of x264's algorithms (which is why I picked this and not parkrun). [1] http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154430 I could have done multiple test encodes, sure, but the problem in this case was that downloading several gigabytes of raw source material isn't exactly instant. And even if I tested with multiple clips, I doubt the conclusion would be that much different.
- nullc 14y ago
  Because of texture this clip benefits enormously from 8x8 transforms (as well as substantially from an activity masking aware encoder). On an intra frame in prior testing Theora did enormously better than VP8 on this clip for these reasons. If your test was to compare an intraframe between vp8 / baseline h264 / and Theora, you would have concluded Theora was the best by a wide margin. But this would be an erroneous conclusion. And sure, perhaps you'd get the same result on other clips. Over high-profile H264 the only obvious format feature that come to mind that could really let VP8 get ahead are the 'truemotion' intra-predictor and creative use of the synthetic reference frame (though I suppose the vp8 developers might have other suggestions) and I'd expect those features to only be big wins on a small number of clips so it wouldn't be hard to miss the cases where VP8 really shines over high profile h264. But you (or I) could have said that without doing the test at all, and there would be 100% fewer clueless people going around claiming that something was proven here that wasn't. Your opinion (or mine) is a fine thing, but it's not proper to launder an opinion as fact by dressing it up in an inadequate test.

Steko 14y ago

Oh look another article that's been flagged into oblivion by zealots. {currently at the bottom of page 4 when by pts it should still be in the top 10)

ksec 14y ago

"While I'd love a patent- and royalty-free video format to offer the highest quality compression you can find, I wouldn't hold my breath for one." I wonder why couldn't they allow software usage ( Encoder and Decoder ) to be free. And only collect royalty on Hardware, and Industry Production use.