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MSU Video Codecs Comparison 2021 Part 3: 4K

Sixteen Annual Video-Codecs Comparison by MSU

Video group head:	Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
Project head:	Dr. Dmitriy Kulikov
Measurements, analysis:	Dr. Mikhail Erofeev, Anastasia Antsiferova, Egor Sklyarov, Alexander Yakovenko, Nickolay Safonov, Alexander Gushin, Nikita Alutis

compression.ru

Lomonosov
Moscow State University (MSU)
Graphics and Media Lab

Dubna International
State University

Institute for Information
Transmission Problems,
Russian Academy of Science

News

20.04.2022 Release of the comparison

Results

The results below are based solely on quality scores and do not take into account encoding speed
Encoders with scores closer than 1% share one place

All standards

Slow (1 fps)

Fast (30 fps)

Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1

BVC2 (other),
Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC),
BVC1 (HEVC)

Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC),
Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC),
BVC1 (HEVC)

Best encoder 8-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1

BVC2 (other)

BVC1 (HEVC)

Best encoder 8-bit
Y-VMAF 0.6.1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 8-bit
Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1

Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC),
Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 10-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1

Tencent266 v0.2 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 10-bit
Y-VMAF 0.6.1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best encoder 10-bit
Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent266 v0.1 (VVC)

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

HEVC & AV1 standards

Slow (1 fps)

Fast (30 fps)

Best HEVC encoder, 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best AV1 encoder, 8-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)

QAV1 (AV1)

Best AV1 encoder, 8-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1

Tencent TXAV1 (AV1), XAV1 (AV1)

QAV1 (AV1)

Best HEVC encoder, 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent V265 (HEVC)

Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-SSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF NEG 0.6.1

Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)

QAV1 (AV1), SVT-AV1 (AV1)

Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-MSSSIM 6:1:1, Y-VMAF 0.6.1

Tencent TXAV1 (AV1)

QAV1 (AV1)

Best AV1 encoder, 10-bit
YUV-PSNR avg. MSE 6:1:1

XAV1 (AV1)

SVT-AV1 (AV1)

^* - YUV-VMAF was calculated as VMAF for all colour-planes (Y, U, V) following the same methodology as YUV-SSIM, YUV-PSNR and other metrics.

The biggest number of codecs took part in comparison of Slow encoding (1 fps). The winners vary for different objective quality metrics. The participants were rated using BSQ-rate (enhanced BD-rate) scores [1].

[1] A. Zvezdakova, D. Kulikov, S. Zvezdakov, D. Vatolin, "BSQ-rate: a new approach for video-codec performance comparison and drawbacks of current solutions," 2020.

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Use cases

Slow (1 fps), Fast (30 fps) (partially)

Slow (1 fps), Fast (30 fps)

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Participated codecs

	Codec name	Use cases	Standard	Version
1	Reference x265 MulticoreWare, Inc.	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	H.265/HEVC	3.5+1-f0c1022b6, Windows
2	BVC1 Bytedance Inc.	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	HEVC	V2, Windows
3	BVC2 Bytedance Inc.	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	Other	V2, Windows
4	vo265 Zhenyu Liu	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit	HEVC	1.0, Linux
5	MainConcept HEVC MainConcept GmbH	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	HEVC	13.1, Windows
6	QAV1 iQIYI Inc.	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	AV1	v2.2, Linux
7	rav1e The rav1e contributors	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit	AV1	0.5.0-alpha (p20210518), Windows
8	SVT-AV1 Open Visual Cloud	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	AV1	v0.8.6, Windows
9	SVT-HEVC Open Visual Cloud	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	HEVC	1.5.1, Windows
10	SVT-VP9 Open Visual Cloud	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	VP9	0.3.0, Windows
11	Tencent V265 Tencent	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	HEVC	-, Linux
12	XAV1 X Man	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit	AV1	0.1, Linux
13	Tencent266 v0.1 Tencent	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit	VVC	0.1, Windows
14	Tencent266 v0.2 Tencent	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit	VVC	0.2, Windows
15	Tencent TXAV1 Tencent	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit	AV1	-, Linux
16	VVenC Fraunhofer HHI	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Slow (1 fps) 10-bit	VVC	v1.0.0, Linux
17	x264 x264 project	Slow (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	AVC	r3065-ae03d92, Windows

Comparison Rules

4K codec testing objectives

The main goal of this report it 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.

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, Linux (Ubuntu 20.4)

For this platform we considered four key use cases with different speed requirements:

Fast 8-bit: UHD, 30fps
Slow 8-bit: UHD, 1fps
Fast 10-bit: UHD-10bit, 30fps
Slow 10-bit: UHD-10bit, 1fps

See more on Call For Codecs 2021 page

25 video sequences at 4K resolution were used for tests: 18 video sequences had 8-bit color depth and 7 video sequences had 10-bit color depth. Note: we used technically 10-bit videos for evaluation, but the colours in the videos themselves do not utilize wide luminance range (they are not HDR).

Codec Analysis and Tuning for Codec Developers and Codec Users

Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

17+ years working in the area of video codec analysis and tuning using objective quality metrics and subjective comparisons.
30+ 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

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.