HEVC Video Codecs Comparison 2017 (Twelfth MSU Video Codecs Comparison)

• UPDATE 22/01/2018
  • High-quality encoders (inc. VP9, AV1) comparison is released
• UPDATE 11/01/2018
  • High-speed encoders comparison is released
• UPDATE 01/12/2017
  • 4K video encoders comparison is released
  • Subjective video encoders comparison is released
• Video group head: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
• Project head: Dr. Dmitriy Kulikov
• Measurements, analysis: Dr. Mikhail Erofeev, Stanislav Dolganov, Sergey Zvezdakov

Pro version of comparison will be available immediately after report purchasing.

Video Codecs that Were Tested

Overview

Objectives and Testing Tools

HEVC Codec Testing Objectives

The main goal of this report is 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. The main task of the comparison is to analyze different encoders for the task of transcoding video — e.g., compressing video for personal use.

HEVC Codec Testing Rules

The comparison was performed on Corei7 6700K (Skylake) @4Ghz, RAM 8GB, Windows8.1. For this platform we considered three key use cases with different speed requirements.

• Fast/High Density — 1080@60fps
• Universal/Broadcast VQ — 1080p@25fps
• Ripping/Pristine VQ — 1080p@1fps and SSIM-RD curve better than x264-veryslow

Video sequences selection

In “MSU Video Codecs Comparison 2016” we introduced a new technique for test dataset sequences’ selection. This technique was designed to create dataset containing representative set of sequences that encoders are facing in everyday life. In this report we use the same methodology for video sequences selection, but we have dramatically updated video database from which we sample videos for encoders’ comparison. We analyzed over 512,000 videos hosted at Vimeo looking for 4K and FullHD videos with high bitrates (50 Mbps was selected as a lower bitrate boundary). This enabled us to find and download, 662 new 4K videos and 1993 new FullHD videos.

Overall Conclusions

Overall, the leaders in this comparison are Kingsoft HEVC encoder and x265! Here are some graphs from report:

Professional Versions of Comparison Report

HEVC Comparison Report Pro 2017 version contains:

• Additional objective metrics (PSNR, SSIM)
• All metrics results for all colorplanes (Y,U,V and overall)
• Results for all the sequences, codecs and presets used in comparison
• Much more figures
• etc.

Acknowledgments

The Graphics & Media Lab Video Group would like to express its gratitude to the following companies for providing the codecs and settings used in this report:

• SIF developer team
• AVS2 developer team
• Nanjing Yunyan
• Kingsoft

The Video Group would also like to thank these companies for their help and technical support during the tests.

Thanks

Special thanks to the following contributors of our previous comparisons

Codec Analysis and Tuning for Codec Developers and Codec Users

Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

• 12 years working in the area of video codec analysis and tuning using objective quality metrics and subjective comparisons.
• 27+ reports of video codec comparisons and analysis (H.264, 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.

We could perform next task for codec developers and codec users.

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.

Contacts

E-mail: videocodec-testing@graphics.cs.msu.ru