whats better mpeg4 or h.263

[jamespoo]

what codec is better i got given a old mobile phone that was manufactured back in 2007 off a mate of mine its a cheap Chinese one

it only supports mpeg4 and h.263 with a screen size upto 320x240
what is the best codec out of the 2 it supports i should convert my dvds vob too

[jagabo]

mpeg4 is rather vague. MPEG 4 is a specification including Part 2 (Divx/Xvid), part 10 (h.264, AVC), and a lot of other stuff. Are you sure "mpeg4" doesn't mean the MP4 container? So you don't really have any choice of codec.

[Hoser Rob]

Neither are codecs. They're formats/sets of specs. A codec (coder/decoder) is an implementation of a format.

Yep, mpeg4 is rather broad. But it seems to me that h.263 is associated with MPEG-4 ASP (advanced simple profile). That's what I'd try first for your device. A number of codecs (like divx/xvid/libavcodec) support mpeg4 asp. And I'd keep the bit rate fairly low in your case. Probably under 900K/s.

For this type of encoding I'm partial to avidemux myself.

[Case]

But it seems to me that h.263 is associated with MPEG-4 ASP (advanced simple profile).

Except that it is not.

[yoda313]

Also probably best to keep the file size under 2gb like the old divx size limitation. Just to be safe.

[Mephesto]

Except that it is not.

It is actually. Thing is, the ****-smokers at MPEG, ISO and ITU have a serious deficiency when it comes to keeping their shit consistent so it almost seems like they deliberately try to make this all as confusing as possible. Take MP4, it should've been the successor to MP3 but instead they made MP4 the successor of the generic MPEG-4 container which should've been called MPG4 and called the successor to MP3 "AAC" or "M4A" so nobody knew what the **** it even was when it was out and just resorted to lower quality OGG because of that.

Anyway, H.263 is just the ITU-equivalent of MPEG-4 part2 just like H.261 is MPEG-1 and H.262 is MPEG-2 but both are broad standards that cover a decade of evolving codecs. The first H.263 codec was Sorenson something I believe and it was just slightly better than MPEG-2 but created for the specific purpose of high quality videoconferencing at low bitrates. The latest standard of H.263 is MPEG-4 ASP basically, or usually known as Divx/Xvid.

Some video contained in FLV/3GP/MP4 or whatever container the OP has from his phone would display "S-Mpeg4" in the header while others display H.263 yet being more or less the same format with the same quality.

To answer OP's question, it doesn't matter.

[jamespoo]

thx guys