HEVC Video Codecs Comparison 2018

Thirteen MSU Video Codecs Comparison

• Video group head: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
• Project head: Dr. Dmitriy Kulikov
• Measurements, analysis: Dr. Mikhail Erofeev, Anastasia Antsiferova, Sergey Zvezdakov, Denis Kondranin

Welcome to 2018 HEVC video codecs comparison page! If you want to receive notifications about our reports, please

2018 report parts

• 4K Report results (Released!)
• Subjective Report results
• Main Report (objective) results

Video codecs that were tested in 2018

Objectives and testing rules

• HEVC codec testing objectives
• Test hardware characteristics
• Video sequences selection

Codec analysis and tuning for codec developers and codec users

Thanks

Contact information

2018 Report Parts

High Quality (AV1) Report Comparison on FullHD video sequences with ultra slow/high quality presets Released on April, 4	7 codecs AV1, VP9, SIF, sz265, x265, sz264, x264	Free version Enterprise version You will receive all Enterprise Reports (High Quality, 4K, Subjective and FullHD) Alternative payment method
	5 FullHD video sequences
	Special Use Case 120 seconds per frame, encoding presets determined by codecs developers
	10 objective metrics YUV-SSIM, Y-SSIM, U-SSIM, V-SSIM, YUV-PSNR, Y-PSNR, U-PSNR, V-PSNR, Y-VMAF(v0.6.1), Y-VMAF(v0.6.1 Phone)
	HTML and PDF documents 150+ interactive charts and 48 pages
4K Report Comparison on high-resolution video sequences Released on January, 15	6 codecs HW265, sz265, Tencent Shannon Encoder, x265, sz264, x264	Free version Enterprise version You will receive all Enterprise Reports (High Quality, 4K, Subjective and FullHD) Alternative payment method
	10 4K video sequences
	Special Use Case 25 fps, encoding presets determined by codecs developers
	5 objective metrics YUV-SSIM, Y-SSIM, YUV-PSNR, Y-PSNR, Y-VMAF(v.0.6.1)
	HTML and PDF documents 535 interactive charts and 46 pages
Subjective Report Subjective comparison conducted on Subjectify.us platform Released on November, 19	10 codecs Kingsoft HEVC Encoder, SIF Encoder, sz264, sz265, Tencent Shannon Encoder, UC265, VITEC HEVC GEN2+ Encoder, VP9, x264, x265	Free version Enterprise version You will receive all Enterprise Reports (High Quality, 4K, Subjective and FullHD) Alternative payment method
	473 unique observers 22542 valid answers
	5 video sequences Short fragments from Crowd run, Ducks Take Off, Mountain bike, Playground, Red Kayak
	Ripping Use Case At least 1 FPS
	6 metrics Subjective score and 5 objective: YUV-SSIM, Y-SSIM, YUV-PSNR, Y-PSNR, Y-VMAF(v.0.6.1)
	HTML and PDF documents 118 interactive charts and 34 pages

Video Codecs that were Tested in 2018

High Quality (AV1) Report

The leaders of high quality comparison:

• First place: AV1
• Second place: VP9, x265 and sz265
• Third place: sz264 and x264

4K Report

The leaders of comparison on 4K videos:

• First place: HW265 (Huawei) and Tencent Shannon Encoder
• Second place: sz265
• Third place: x265

Below is a short summary with 3 of 535 graphs from general report.

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Rate-distortion results of the competitors at House Demolition sequence:

At Ducks Take Off sequence, four encoders show Pareto-optimal results: sz264, sz265, HW265 and Tencent Shannon Encoder.

Purchase Enterprise version to see all comparison results. Enterprise version is free for all buyers of Enterprise Main and Subjective reports.

Subjective Report

Below is a short summary with 3 of 118 graphs from general report.

According to the results of subjective comparison, the best codecs are the following:

• First place: Tencent Shannon Encoder and VITEC HEVC GEN2+ Encoder
• Second place: VP9 and x265
• Third place: Kingsoft HEVC Encoder

Below we compare the results of subjective comparison with relative bitrate saving scores computed using SSIM for the set of five videos used in subjective comparison:

The winners determine from mean quality scores, but there is no absolute winner in the comparison, since different encoders take first place at different test video sequences: for example, on Crowd Run (short) three encoders show Pareto-optimal results: VITEC HEVC GEN2+ Encoder, x265 and VP9.

Tencent Shannon Encoder shows the best quality option for Red Kayak (short) sequence.

Purchase Enterprise version to see all comparison results. Enterprise version is free for all buyers of Enterprise Main Report, and Enterprise Main Report is also free for all buyers of Enterprise Subjective Report.
You can also download subjective comparison rules (PDF, 3.9 MB).

Main Report (objective)

According to just quality scores (YUV-SSIM), the best codecs (among those we evaluated for all three use cases) are the following:

• First place: HW265
• Second place: Tencent Shannon Encoder
• Third place: Intel MSDK HEVC (SW) and Kingsoft HEVC Encoder

We tested three encoded use cases (see the description in section Test Hardware Characteristics). The universal-encoding use case has five Pareto optimal encoders in terms of mean speed and quality: UC265, Intel MSDK HEVC (SW), Intel MSDK HEVC (GA), Tencent Shannon Encoder and HW265. Nevertheless, the differences emerge for particular sequences and use cases.

Free report contains the results for two of 28 sequences, and results of all sequences and use cases are available in enterprise version.

Hint: click on codec's name in the legend to add or remove it.

Here is one of the RD-charts:

Hint: click on codec's name in the legend to add or remove it.

Download Free Report

Objectives and Testing Rules

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.

Test Hardware Characteristics

• CPU: Intel Socket 1151 Core i7 8700K (Coffee Lake) (3.7Ghz, 6C12T, TDP 95W)
• Mainboard: ASRock Z370M Pro4
• RAM: Crucial CT16G4DFD824A 16GB DIMM DDR4 2400MHz CL15
• OS: Windows 10 x64

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

See more on Call-for-codecs 2018 page

Video Sequences Selection

We have updated video database from which we choose sample videos for encoders’ comparison. In this year, we analyzed 539765 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 942 new 4K videos and 2346 new FullHD videos.

We also completed list of selected sequences with high-quality videos from media.xiph.org.

This year test data set consists of 28 sequences: 5 from the old data set, 16 new ones from Vimeo and 7 from xiph.org. 25 sequences from the old data set were excluded. The average bitrate for all sequences in the final set is 449.72 Mbps, median — 192.02 Mbps. “Hera” (90 Mbps), “Television studio” (92 Mbps) and “Foggy beach” (93 Mbps) sequences have minimal bitrates. The complete list of sequences and description of selection process appears in PDF report.

Codec Analysis and Tuning for Codec Developers and Codec Users

Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

• 14+ 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.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.

We could perform next tasks 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.

Thanks

Special thanks to the following contributors of our previous comparisons

Contacts

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

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