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4K & 10-bit MSU Video Codecs Comparison 2020

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

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Methodology
- 4K Comparison Methodology
- Test hardware characteristics
Codecs analysis and tuning for codec developers and codec users
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Summary

Goal: This report presents the results of video codecs comparison using 4K & 10-bit videos and objective quality measurement.

Main points of this test:

12 codecs of HEVC/AV1/AVC and other standards were evaluated in winter 2020–2021
12 UHD videos were used for comparison
This year we added a special section with comparison on several 10-bit videos
For objective quality measurements we used SSIM, PSNR (2 versions) and VMAF metrics

	Universal (1fps)	Fast (30fps)
Best quality for 8-bit encoding (YUV-SSIM)	1st: BVC1 2nd: MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder 3rd: sz265	1st: BVC1 2nd: MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder 3rd: sz265 and SVT-HEVC
Best quality for 10-bit encoding (YUV-SSIM)	MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder	MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder
Best speed/quality trade-off (8 bit encoding) (YUV-SSIM)	BVC1 and MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder	BVC1 and MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder

Judging for speed and quality scores, the following encoders showed best results for 8-bit videos encoding: BVC1 and MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder. Below are speed-quality scores averaged for all test videos, for Universal (1fps) and Fast (30fps) encoding.

Figure 1 Speed-qiality trade-off by SSIM — Universal (1 fps), 8-bit content

Figure 2 Speed-qiality trade-off by SSIM — Fast (30 fps), 8-bit content

The plot below shows encoding speed and quality (by VMAF for 4K) scores at backgammon video sequence. There are two Pareto-optimal encoders here: MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder and BVC1.

Figure 2 Relative encoding speed / relative quality by VMAF — Universal (1 fps), 8-bit content

For 10-bit content less participants sent us encoding binaries and presets, and MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder showed the best results in this test case.

Figure 3 Overall quality by SSIM — Universal (1 fps), 10-bit content

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4K Report Objective comparison using 4K 8- and 10-bit videos Released on April, 1	11 codecs MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder, Reference x265, BVC1, SVT-HEVC, sz265, x265, aom, SVT-AV1, SIF Codec, SVT-VP9, x264	Free version HTML report (824 KB) PDF & HTML reports (ZIP, 6.7 MB) Enterprise version You will receive enterprise versions of all reports (FullHD, Subjective and 4K) Contact us if you want to buy only Enterprise 4K Report
	4 UHD 10-bit video sequences crowd_run, ducks_take_off, military_exhibition, resort
	8 UHD 8-bit video sequences backgammon, ballerine, california_coast, dron_view, news, waterfall
	2 Encoding Use Cases Universal (1 fps), Fast (30 fps)
	13 metrics Including: YUV-SSIM, YUV-PSNR (avg. log), YUV-PSNR (avg. MSE), Y-VMAF (v0.6.3)
	HTML and PDF documents 900+ interactive charts and 70 pages

Participated codecs

	Codec name	Use cases	Standard	Version
1	aom AOMedia	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit	AV1	2.0.0-287-g2aa13c436, Windows
2	BVC1 Bytedance Inc.	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	H.265/HEVC	V1, Windows
3	MC HEVC/H.265 Encoder MainConcept GmbH	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Universal (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	H.265/HEVC	HEVC SDK 12.2, Windows
4	Reference x265 MulticoreWare, Inc.	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Universal (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	H.265/HEVC	3.4+20-g06c52b0fd, Windows
5	SIF Codec SIF Codec LLC	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit	Other	1.95, Windows
6	SVT-AV1 Open Visual Cloud	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Universal (1 fps) 10-bit	AV1	v0.8.3, Windows
7	SVT-HEVC Open Visual Cloud	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	H.265/HEVC	v1.4.3, Windows
8	SVT-VP9 Open Visual Cloud	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	VP9	v0.2.0, Windows
9	sz265 RayShaper	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit	H.265/HEVC	v1.1.0, Linux
10	x264 x264 project	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Universal (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	H.264/AVC	0.161.3018 db0d417, Windows
11	x265 MulticoreWare, Inc.	Universal (1 fps) 8-bit, Fast (30 fps) 8-bit, Universal (1 fps) 10-bit, Fast (30 fps) 10-bit	H.265/HEVC	3.4+20-g06c52b0fd, Windows

4K Comparison Methodology

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.

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

Fast: UHD, 30fps
Universal: UHD, 1fps
Fast 10bit: UHD-10bit, 30fps
Universal 10bit: UHD-10bit, 1fps

12 video sequences at 4K resolution were used for tests: 8 video sequences had 8-bit color depth and 4 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).

Brief methodology review is given in the presentation:

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

Codec Analysis and Tuning for Codec Developers and Codec Users

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.

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Special thanks to the following contributors of our previous comparisons

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compression.ru	in cooperation with	Lomonosov MSU Graphics & Media Lab (Video Group)
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