Best Video codec for ultra-low bitrates?

[theaveng]

I already know that HE-AAC + SBR is the best audio codec (FM quality down to 16 kbit/s).

So:

Which video codec should I use for the best quality at ultra-low rates?

[Krispy Kritter]

Your answer will vary depending on the final use of the files.

[theaveng]

I don't understand? Either a codec produces a nice picture, or it does not; it should not matter how it's being used.

My question is simply:

Which codec produces the best picture at extremely low bitrates? MPEG4? VLC-1? WMV? Other?

[Baldrick]

I would guess AVC/H264 or VLC-1.

[Midzuki]

@ theaveng:

Have you just bought a mobile player

==============

[Soopafresh]

I don't understand? Either a codec produces a nice picture, or it produces crap.

Yes, it certainly doesn't. Sometimes. In your case, I would say definitely maybe.

[theaveng]

Rude (above).

Have you just bought a mobile player

No. I like to squeeze my videos down to ~70 megabytes, so that they don't take-up as much room on my hard drive. (Just as I like to squeeze my audio files using HE-AAC+ to as 16 or 24 kbit/s.)

[ricardouk]

WMV - use WMNicEnc to convert the video

[Krispy Kritter]

Everyones definition of "quality" is different. The format that will yield the smallest file size won't give you the best "quality".

There is no "best audio codec" or "best video codec" to get the best "quality". The best quality is achieved by using no compression. So, while your audio codec above "HE-AAC + SBR" is the "best quality" in your opinion for your USE, it is NOT the highest quality audio format.

In order to choose the best codec for YOUR application, it is necessary to know how you will use the files. It sounds like your primary concern is file size. So you will likely be using h.264, divx, or wmv, but you will have to decide which meets your expectation of size and quality.

[theaveng]

while your audio codec above "HE-AAC + SBR" is the "best quality" in your opinion for your USE, it is NOT the highest quality audio format.

At ultra-low bitrates (8 - 12 -16 kbit/sec), YES AAC+ is truly the best quality. No other codec matches it. And that's what my question was asking: At extremely low rates, which codecs have the best quality?

re: Uncompressed.
It's non-relevant.
(i.e. read the subject).

[jagabo]

Another thing to consider is the nature of artifacts as the video bitrate decreases. Xvid and Divx tend to develop blockiness (which can be alleviated a bit with their deblocking playback options). h.264 starts looking like watercolors. WMV starts dropping frames making playback jerky.

[roman v]

AVC/MPEG4 performance at ultra-low bitrates considered to be the best out of todays video codecs.

[roman v]

Long time reader of this forum.What a unique and informative side!

[Nelson37]

70 MB??? Are you encoding a movie, or just a commercial?

BEST is an opinion. Period. Try them and see which looks less crappy to YOUR eyes. The only answer you will get is someone else's opinion, and the only one that matters is yours. Therefore, the only one who can answer this question is you. For example, for many people, "FM quality" is just not good enough.

Final usage is important for many reasons, just one would be whether or not interlacing can or should be used, or should be discarded. Some codecs degrade dramatically with interlaced source. Many require powerful PC for good decoding, most mentioned are exclusive to PC.

[zoobie]

mpeg1 is good a low bitrates
perceived quality is also dependent on your monitor, graphics card, and personal eyesight
don't store anything on hard drives because they fail

just a few more things to consider

[Midzuki]

Not a word about the "stupid" RealVideo :P

++++++

[Cornucopia]

I don't understand? Either a codec produces a nice picture, or it produces crap...

Just like with audio, so too every picture isn't the same as every other picture.

The codec that does best at low bitrates with low motion video may be crappy for high motion, and vice-versa. There's also Framerate, fine detail, and colorspace to consider, and with respect to various artifacts (that may or may not be offensive to you, but not others): banding, gibbs effect (ringing), blocking, smearing, etc.

The codec that does best with something like "SouthPark" with its simple motion and color palette, won't be the same as the codec that does best with "LOTR" during a battle sequence. Even with the same bitrate and resolution.

And unlike what you were counting as gospel, Audio has similar discrepancies. Is a program composed of speech only, symphonic music, electronic disco? Are there lots of gaps? Is there lots of reverb? These make a HUGE difference, and your one-size-fits-all approach is sophomoric and does a disservice to the material.

Knowledge of how these interact, trial-and-error, comparisons, pre-processing tweaking--these are the things that you do to get the best quality, with WHATEVER codec you end up using (and they WILL vary).

Scott

[theaveng]

And unlike what you were counting as gospel, Audio has similar discrepancies. Is a program composed of speech only, symphonic music, electronic disco? Are there lots of gaps? Is there lots of reverb? These make a HUGE difference, and your one-size-fits-all approach is sophomoric and does a disservice to the material

(1) Assuming the material is important enough to care about "disservicing" it. I don't really care if I squeeze the latest Britney Spears song into 8 kbit/sec audio. I don't think it will make her sound any worse. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek.)

(2) Does this mean I should ignore the many, many studies (using blind listening tests of various persons) which show MP3 performs poorly at 32 kbit/s, but HE-AAC +SBR is "near identical" to the original source material?

(3) Now that we've established AVC/MPEG4 is probably the best, I'm going to start re-compressing some of my TV shows to 1/5th their present size (350 downto 70 megabyte). My hard drive's running out of room.

(4)

Storing on a hard drive is okay as long as you use a second drive to back up the important information.

[Krispy Kritter]

Codec aside, I store my TV shows on DVD. You can fit 12 per disc which ends up being a full season on 2 DVD's.

Let me know how it turns out. I have a feeling after the 2nd encoding, the video quality will suffer a bit. Which, depending on how you watch them, may be a big deal...at least it would for me as I play them back on a big screen TV. But all that really matters is if you are satisfied.

[Midzuki]

WMV3 == Windows Media Video 9 can produce
acceptable-quality (IMO) results @ 2000 kbps for Full-D1 resolution,
@ 500 kbps for 320x240, and so on. I'm sure H264 can do even better,
but I also know it is much harder to be duly-mastered than the WMV3 VfW codec
^.^;;

*******************

[vhelp]

Evening guys.

Maybe some members are missunderstanding some points in this endeavor.

But, there are lots of other facts to consider. Some were already mentioned,
though scattered throughout the posts, here.

What about the length of these videos ??
40 minutes; vs. 60 minutes; or longer;

The poster mentioned, "..downto 70MB", but is that for 45 mins
or 60 minutes ??
That (70mb) doesn't sound quite right if the source length is 45/60 minutes

Also, where does the source originate from ??
Captures; dvd-rips; downloaded movies; other;

How will these *new* videos be views/played ??
sofware on pc; ipac; phone; dvd player; youtube; other;

Do these videos (to be re-encoded to ultra-low bitrates) have any realized
artifacts in them ??
I've seen many video's that have various artifacts already in them. In fact, I
can't remember when I ever seen a video source that was NOT rittled with any
such (discirnable) artifacts, ever.

The purpose for this question was to help you to realize that if this/these
videos have any artifacts -- and they will -- your ultra-low bitrate is prob
going to fail or else give you undesireable results.

...

I wouldn't mind seeing several good examples of this *squeezing* to ultra
low bitrate to get an idea of what this member is asking, in terms of
what-to-expect in this quest.

So, I wrote below, some examples of what was thrown up here, so far, and
hoping that others can chime in with additions, though strickly volentary..

WM9 @ 2000 Kbps, full D1 720 x 480
h264 @ 500 Kbps, 320 x 240

-vhelp 4446

[theaveng]

The poster mentioned, "..downto 70MB", but is that for 45 mins
or 60 minutes ?? That (70mb) doesn't sound quite right if the source length is 45/60 minutes

.... I wouldn't mind seeing several good examples of this *squeezing* to ultra low bitrate to get an idea of what this member is asking, in terms of what-to-expect in this quest.

I've not squeezed anything yet (too busy with my new job), but I have downloaded 70 megabyte TV shows (42 minutes each) off demonoid (dead). The TV shows looked "good" as long as everybody stood still, but when there was a high-action sequence the video quickly turned pixelated & jerky.

Also they had Polish subtitles. But I was okay with that, because I knew I would eventually go out and purchase the Stargate or Galactica DVD version after the Sci-Fi channel released the official season set.



BTW another reason I liked the 70 megabyte rips was because I was downloading over a 50 kbit/second modem (narrowband phone line). I no longer have that handicap, but I still like the smaller storage space of tiny files. That's also why I re-encode my Teaching Company files from 128 MP3 to 16 kbit/sec AAC+SBR.

[lordsmurf]

BEST is an opinion. Period. Try them and see which looks less crappy to YOUR eyes.

True, but not true. The minute a person starts to show it to others, they need to be slapped upside the head for over-compressing. If you want to punish yourself, fine. But I've never met a single person that never shows or distributes a video to somebody else. Do those other people a favor, and use good settings. If you're a hermit with no friends/family to show, and never share anything with anybody, then by all means, compress the shit out of it, and go blind on playback. We don't care. High compression is for the stupid and the ignorant, when it starts to harm quality and stability of the audio and video.

[Midzuki]

According to the bitrate calculator:

IF
audio_bitrate == 96 kbps &&
final_size == 70 MB &&
time_length == 42 min
THEN
video bitrate == 131 kbps

--- which, under WMV3 compression, would require resolution
not greater than 160x120. Good for viewing on a wristwatch ^_^

*****************

[theaveng]

What about this?

IF
audio_bitrate == 16 kbps &&
final_size == 70 MB &&
time_length == 42 min
THEN
video bitrate == 211 kbps


211 kbit/sec out to be enough for okay video quality. As it turned-out, rather than resqueeze everything, I downloaded 70 or 150 megabyte versions off bit-torrent (42 minutes each). That saved time since other people already did the work.

The codec they used was XVID.

[poisondeathray]

This is crazy. HDD are cheap right now. You can get 1TB for ~$130-140

But for discussion purposes, x264 is hands down the best at low bitrate. RV10 is 2nd. I'm surprised someone would use XviD at such low bitrates = too much blocking. You can also do tweaking with custom matrices, maxing out B-frames, and other filters such as hqdn3d

You can only do low bitrate encodes with the original source. Re-compressing an already compressed video with a lossy codec = bad.

[theaveng]

This is crazy. HDD are cheap right now. You can get 1TB for ~$130-140

For me a $100 external USB drive (cheapest I could find) is a major purchase. If you think that's cheap, feel free to buy me one. If you prefer, we could split the cost 50-50.

[RabidDog]

if its worth downloading and watching then surely its either worth waiting to BUY the Dvd box set or renting to watch in higher quality. Sounds like it will come out like "dazed & Confused" cartoony vision..
What resolutions do these 70mb files have? 200x140?
Small enough to download to a pacemaker?
hard drives available for $40 $60 bux, get a paper-round? Save up?

[pfxz]

Wow this is so pointless... I downloaded in the past month almost 1 TB of videos... I would spend an eternity if I were to re-encode everything to fit a floppy disk like you're trying to do. They said it before, an external HDD or recordable media are pretty cheap nowadays.

And true enough, what works for situation A won't necessarily work for situation B. And even different people have different opinions on quality; I usually refuse to watch videos that don't look better than... Let's say youtube. And gosh, Youtube quality is crappy enough...

But anyways... I still think RV* (the RV10, 20 ... series) is unbeatable at low bitrates. It looks almost the same as h264, but encodes/decodes much faster.

[theaveng]

Wow. I wish I could afford a $60 a month connection. But I can't; all I have is $15 a month connection. About 50 gig per month.

What's RV10?

if its worth downloading and watching then surely its either worth waiting to BUY the Dvd box set or renting to watch in higher quality. Sounds like it will come out like "dazed & Confused" cartoony vision..

I never buy anything I have not previously seen.

Do you?

Hence the need to download it FIRST, and watch it, to see if it's worth buying after the DVD is released. I've saved a lot of money by watching shows that turned-out to be trash (like Masters of Horror), and thus never buying the DVD set.