Video Codecs Analysis and Tuning

Codec Analysis

Download:

• x264 Codec Capabilities Analysis report, PDF (453 KB), 2006 YUVsoft,
  
• x264 Codec Strong and Weak Points report, PDF (1259 KB), 2008 MSU Video Group
  

One of the main tasks undertaken during the development and tuning of a codec is evaluation of the quality of compressed video. Our team has more than 7 years of experience testing and developing video codecs of various types and standards. Some of our publicly available codec comparison reports can be freely downloaded from the compression.ru website. The unique experience gained during these comparisons, along with our own video codec-related research and development projects, has helped us to provide high-quality video codec testing and tuning services worldwide. We boast highly qualified and experienced personnel who produce professional, custom software for management of measurement data and for automatic and semiautomatic analysis of data. Our team is able to quickly and efficiently locate any weaknesses in a codec, find the advantages of competitors' codecs and take steps to create a superior product.

x264 Codec Capabilities Analysis

Below is a demo comparison that shows a typical analysis and its results. More than 70 different presets were tested for the x264 video codec (one of the best H.264 codecs). The results of the testing and analysis clearly show the strong and weak points of the codec. Such results are the first step of the codec's tuning and improvement.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Example of x264 parameters analysis

x264 Codec Strong and Weak Points Analysis

The main purpose of this report is to analyze quality of codecs features implementation using objective methodology. Main results of this work are the following:

List of optimal presets. Those presets can be used for better encoding of your video.

Recommendations for presets usage for different encoding speed.

Conclusions about methods implementations efficiency related to other implemented methods.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Example of x264 Strong and Weak Points analysis

Codec Tuning

The tuning process includes not only improved parameter selection, which is by itself a complicated task that requires proper expertise, but also development of new algorithms compliant with the desired standards for compressed video.

The implementation, the support for numerous options or profiles and the use of advanced methods for control of the encoding process are only the beginning of a solid codec's competitiveness and compression effectiveness. The possible applications are so wide-ranging that a truly effective codec must undergo extensive goal-oriented tuning. Analysis and tuning should take into account any possible advantages from the use of modern pre-filtering and post-filtering methods, such as denoising, deflicking, deblocking and film grain noise suppression and reconstruction.

Testing and tuning software

Analysis of codec output is a difficult task, partly because of the enormous amount of data. Even simple testing of a codec's effectiveness without the additional debugging information analysis requires handling 5-dimension data structures (codec, preset, bitrate, video sequence and metric).

We have developed Video Codec Scoring System to make the tuning process faster, easier and more robust. This system includes:

• Automatic codec running system
• Objective quality measurement tool
• MATLAB toolbox for codec result visualization and calculation of aggregate effectiveness indicators
• Client-Srever architecture
• Data base usage

These tools have been used in and approved for each of our video codec comparison and development projects.

Contact Information

For information on possible video codec analysis and tuning contracts or licensing of our software, please contact our .