HEVC/AV1 Video Codecs Comparison 2019

100 videos were used for comparison! (report part I, FullHD)
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• Participated codecs
• Reports
• Main report (Objective comparison, FullHD videos)
• Subjective report
• 4K report (New!)
• High-Quality comparison report (New!)
• General results
• Videos selection
• Descriptions of 100 test videos
• Rules
  • HEVC codec testing objectives
  • Test hardware characteristics
• Codec analysis and tuning for codec developers and codec users
• Thanks
• Leave a feedback
• Contact information

	Codec name	Report parts				Standard
		Part I. FullHD	Part II. Subjective	Part III. 4K	Part IV. High Quality
1	aom AOMedia					AV1
2	arowana xvc Divideon	Ripping use case				xvc
3	Bytedance V265 Encoder ByteDance Inc.	Fast, Universal use cases				HEVC
4	HW265 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.					HEVC
5	MainConcept HEVC MainConcept GmbH					HEVC
6	rav1e rav1e					AV1
7	SIF Encoder SIF Encoder Team	Ripping use case		Universal use case		SIF
8	SVT-AV1 Open Visual Cloud			Universal use case		AV1
9	SVT-HEVC Open Visual Cloud					HEVC
10	SVT-VP9 Open Visual Cloud					VP9
11	sz265 Nanjing Yunyan					HEVC
12	Tencent V265 Encoder Tencent					HEVC
13	UC265 Ucodec Inc.	Ripping use case				HEVC
14	VP9 The WebM Project (Google)	Ripping use case				VP9
15	WZAurora AV1 Encoder Visionular	Ripping use case		Universal use case		AV1
16	x264 x264 Developer Team					AVC
17	x265 MulticoreWare, Inc.					HEVC
18	xin265					HEVC

Main report (Objective comparison, FullHD videos) Three encoding use cases measured on 100 FullHD videos Released on October, 21		Free version	Enterprise version
	Use cases	Universal (partially)	Fast, Universal, Ripping
	Per-sequence-results	2 of 100 sequences (only Universal use case)	All 100 sequences for all use cases (in interactive charts)
	Metric: YUV-SSIM
	Description of video sequences
	Codec info (developer, version number, website link)
	Other objective metrics (in addition to YUV-SSIM)		Y-VMAF(0.6.1), Y-VMAF(0.6.2), Y-VMAF(0.6.3), Y-VMAF(0.6.1, Phone), Y-VMAF(0.6.2, Phone), Y-VMAF(0.6.3, Phone), Y-SSIM, U-SSIM, V-SSIM, YUV-PSNR, Y-PSNR, U-PSNR, V-PSNR
	Per-frame metrics results (in HTML version of the report)		All metrics for all sequences and use cases (10000+ charts)
	Relative quality analysis
	Download links for video sequences
	Encoders presets description
	PDF report	58 pages	83 pages
	HTML report	28 interactive charts	14000+ interactive charts
	Price	Free	$950
		Descriptions of 100 used videos can be found on this page or in separate PDF (41 MB)	You will receive enterprise versions of all reports (FullHD, Subjective, 4K and High Quality)

Subjective Report Subjective comparison conducted on Subjectify.us platform Released on November, 1	11 codecs Bytedance, sz265, Tencent V265 Encoder, UC265, x265, xin265, arowana xvc, SIF Encoder, VP9, WZAurora AV1 Encoder, x264	Free version Enterprise version You will receive enterprise versions of all reports (FullHD, Subjective, 4K and High Quality) Contact us if you want to buy only Enterprise Subjective Report
	732 unique observers 25784 valid answers
	5 video sequences Short fragments from Crowd Run, Kayak Trip, Making Alcohol, Tractor, Wedding Party
	Special Subjective Encoding 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 33 pages

4K Report Comparison conducted on 4K (UHD) videos Released on March, 6	12 codecs Bytedance V265 Encoder, HW265, MainConcept HEVC, SVT-HEVC, sz265, x265, SIF Encoder, SVT-AV1, SVT-VP9, VP9, WZAurora AV1 Encoder, x264	Free version PDF report HTML report Download all in one archive (zip) Enterprise version You will receive enterprise versions of all reports (FullHD, Subjective, 4K and High Quality) Contact us if you want to buy only Enterprise 4K Report
	11 4K video sequences From 24 to 60 FPS
	Two Encoding Use Cases 4K Universal (1fps) and 4K Fast (20fps)
	9 metrics YUV_SSIM, YUV_PSNR, Y_VMAF (v0.6.2), Y_SSIM, U_SSIM, V_SSIM, Y_PSNR, U_PSNR, V_PSNR
	HTML and PDF documents 710 interactive charts and 71 pages

Report on high quality encoding Comparison conducted under slow-speed requireents Released on March, 30	7 codecs aom, rav1e, SVT-AV1, SVT-HEVC, SVT-VP9, x264, x265	Enterprise version (for free) PDF report HTML report Download all files in one archive (zip) PDF, HTML report + download links for videos + HTML report with per-frame metrics results
	6 FullHD video sequences From 24 to 60 FPS
	Special Encoding Use Case Formal limitation 0.005 fps (not strict)
	9 metrics YUV_SSIM, YUV_PSNR, Y_VMAF (v0.6.2), Y_SSIM, U_SSIM, V_SSIM, Y_PSNR, U_PSNR, V_PSNR
	HTML and PDF documents 594 interactive charts and 42 pages

Main report (Objective comparison, FullHD videos) summary

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

• First place: HW265
• Second place: Tencent V265 Encoder
• Third place: sz265

The biggest number of codecs took part in comparison with high-quality encoding presets (Ripping use case). The winners for only high-quality encoding are the following:

• First place in high-quality (ripping) use case: HW265
• Second place in high-quality (ripping) use case: Tencent V265 Encoder
• Third place in high-quality (ripping) use case: VP9

We tested three encoded use cases (see the description in section Test Hardware Characteristics). Here is one of the rate-distortions charts for universal encoding (Cion video sequence):

The universal-encoding use case has two Pareto optimal encoders in terms of mean speed and quality: HW265 and Tencent V265 Encoder. Nevertheless, the differences emerge for particular sequences and use cases.

Free version contains the results for 2 of 100 video sequences, while full results are available in enterprise version.

Subjective report summary

According to subjective quality scores, the best codecs among our competitors evaluated for all three use cases are the following:

• First place: WZAurora AV1 Encoder
• Second place: Tencent V265 Encoder
• Third place: arowana xvc

4K report summary

According to SSIM quality scores, the best codecs among our competitors evaluated for two use cases are the following:

• First place: HW265 by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
• Second place: Bytedance V265 Encoder
• Third place: Mainconcept HEVC

Mean overall quality (SSIM):

Overall quality for universal use case (1fps, SSIM):

In this comparison, the results for universal 4K encoding (1fps) differ from overall scores. The following encoders showed the best performance results:

• First place: WZAurora AV1 Encoder
• Second place: HW265 by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
• Third place: Mainconcept HEVC

The above plots show only quality gain, hovewer, all encoders slightly differ in encoding speed. The following speed-quality chart shows the picture for Duck Take Off video sequence.

All graphs, including speed-quality trade-off for all videos, are available in enterprise version (which is free for all buyers of enterprise main and subjective reports).

High quality encoding report summary

According to YUV-SSIM, YUV-PSNR and Y-VMAF quality scores, the best codecs among our competitors evaluated for two use cases are the following:

• First place: aom
• Second place: SVT-AV1
• Third place: x265

Mean overall quality (SSIM):

As we analysed the case of offline encoding, the limit on encoding speed was not strict in this part of the comparison. The following speed-quality chart shows the landscape of competitors relative speed and quality for all video sequences.

The following plot shows per-frame VMAF scores for axebat video sequence at 2 Mbps. SVT-AV1, SVT-HEVC and SVT-VP9 show quality decrease in a part of the video with high motion and complex scenes (running baseball players, splashing water). Enterprise report includes an HTML report with per-frame metrics results for all videos and bit rates.

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 2x16GB (totally 32 GB) 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 2019 page

Videos

Videos for testing set were chosen from MSU video collection via a voting among comparison participants, organizers and an independend expert. In this year, the collection was enlarged up to 18418 sequences which were chosen from 700000+ user-generated videos posted on Vimeo website. All videos have 4K or FullHD resolution and high bitrate (50 Mbps was selected as a lower bitrate boundary).

Bitrate distribution of videos in MSU video collection

Final video set consists of 100 sequences: 8 from the old data set and 92 new ones from Vimeo and media.xiph.org derf's collection. The average bitrate for all sequences in the final set is 218.9 Mbps, median - 143.2 Mbps. City walk (61.5 Mbps), Nancy (67.6 Mbps) and Oman museum (69.7 Mbps) sequences have minimal bitrates.

Descriptions of all test videos are presented on this page and in a separate PDF provided with our reports.

Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

• 15+ 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.

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

compression.ru	in cooperation with		Lomonosov MSU Graphics & Media Lab (Video Group)
			Dubna State University
			Institute for Information Transmission Problems RAS

Materials about MSU Codec Comparison

Other Materials