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MSU Hardware Video Codecs Express Comparison 2020

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

Videos selection
Rules
Test hardware characteristics

Codecs analysis and tuning for codec developers and codec users
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Description

In MSU Hardware Video Codecs Express Comparison 2020, we analyzed 4 hardware and 4 software codecs. For hardware acceleration, both GPU codecs and FPGA codecs were used. The minimum speed of the selected presets is 60 fps.

In the objective part of the report, 50 sequences were used, the metrics used: SSIM, PSNR and VMAF. In the subjective part of the report, we selected 10 videos and conducted an experiment on the Subjectify.us platform.

According to the results of the research, Tencent YaoChiV500 outperforms other codecs both in objective and subjective comparison.

	Objective (50 videos)	Subjective (10 videos)
Best quality (YUV-SSIM)	Tencent YaoChiV500 H.265 (NVENC) x264	YUV-Subjective: Tencent YaoChiV500 H.265 (NVENC) H.265 (NGCodec)
Best quality (Y-VMAF)	Tencent YaoChiV500 H.265 (NVENC) x265 (superfast)
Best quality (YUV-PSNR avg. MSE)	Tencent YaoChiV500 H.265 (NGCodec) x265 (ultrafast)

Download

FPGA Express Report Objective and subjective comparisons of hardware-accelerated video encoders Released on December, ... Full version for free	4 hardware-accelerated and 4 software encoders Tencent YaoChiV500, H.264 (NVENC), H.265 (NVENC), H.265 (NGCodec); x264, x265, H.264 (QSV), H.265 (QSV)
	50 FullHD video sequences in objective comparison 10 FullHD video sequences in subjective comparison
	60 fps encoding Objective and subjective comparisons
	HTML report 2400+ interactive charts

Participated codecs

	Codec name	Hardware acceleration
1	Tencent YaoChiV500	Xilinx Alveo U250
2	H.264 (NVENC)	NVIDIA Titan RTX
3	H.265 (NVENC)	NVIDIA Titan RTX
4	H.265 (NGCodec)	AWS f1.2large
5	H.264 (QSV)	—
6	H.265 (QSV)	—
7	x264	—
8	x265 (superfast)	—
9	x265 (ultrafast)	—

Comparison Rules

Codec testing objectives

The main goal of this report is the presentation of a comparative evaluation of the quality of hardware-accelerated codecs and software codecs using objective measures of assessment. All presets satisfied minimum speed requirement — 60 fps. The main task of the comparison is to analyze different encoders for the task of transcoding video.

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 hardware acceleration we used:

FPGA — Xilinx Alveo U250
FPGA — AWS f1.2large instance
GPU — NVIDIA Titan RTX

Videos

We used the same 50 sequences as in the Main report. Read more on the Main report page: MSU Video Codecs Comparison 2020 Part 1: FullHD, objective.

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.

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

Strong and Weak Points of Your Codec

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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

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Contact Information

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