“Yesterday I demonstrated how H.264 compares to the Sorenson 3 video compression algorithm. Short answer: favorably. Very favorably,” Jeff Harrell writes for The Shape of Days. “Today I wanted to see how H.264 would handle a real challenge. So I pulled out my DVD of Saving Private Ryan, selected what I thought might be one of the toughest ten-second clips in the film, and proceeded to encode it in H.264 at various bit rates to see at what point the footage went from excellent to watchable to unwatchable.”
Harrell writes, “At reader request, I’ve added a clip encoded at 512 kilobits per second. I think the phrase “testing to destruction” was taken a little too literally here, as the 512-kilobit clip looks just terrible. But can a different type of subject matter hold up at 512 kilobits? Stay tuned to find out…. The same reader writes, ‘If 512 looks almost as good as 768, how does 256 look?’ The answer, dear reader is, ‘Terrible.’ But here it is, included just for completeness’ sake.”
Harrell writes, “In my opinion, the 768 kilobit-per-second version is not acceptable. While H.264 does a great job of hiding the compression artifacts — you can see blocking artifacts if you look for them, but they’re very subtle compared to what other codecs produce at these bit rates — the result is still too soft overall for me. Too much detail has been lost, particularly in the far backgrounds. To its credit, H.264 does a spectacular job in the 30 frames or so where the mortar round goes off at camera right. The debris from the explosion is preserved in a way that seems impossible at 768 kilobits per second.”
Check out the test clips (QuickTime 7 required) and the full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
H.264 vs. Sorenson 3 shootout (QuickTime 7 required to view linked samples) – May 11, 2005
I have added sample clips from the TV show “The West Wing” in the past few minutes. The picture quality of broadcast-resolution content at very low bit rates is astonishing.
now if only the people encoding TV shows for BT download would use this, i love watching all my TV via BT and at near HD quality. if they would use H.264 the size would shrink allowing faster downloads, and less stress on their servers. while the quality would increase.
I encoded a Bush speech at high and low bit rates, and either way, it looks like a pack of lies carefully crafted by Karl Rove to deceive the public into lining the pockets of their robber baron cronies in the Big Oil and War Profiteering industries.
Jeff, thanks for doing those stress tests. Just curious: have you ever tried animation? I’ll bet you could get down to bargain-basement bit rates. If you’re game, why not try an episode of The Simpsons next?
hey Sum Jung Gai,
Save these political posts you’re making. It’ll be fun for you to look at them twenty years from now. You can see how right or wrong you were. You can also see how much you’ve changed or stayed the same. As well the world. And no, i’m not being sarcastic. At 42, it often cracks me up to see what I was passionate about as a younger man.
Hey, Sum:
Get a life, you nerd.
XOXOXO,
Kate
That was pretty amazing. iTunes Video Store here we come!
Sum, save it for a POLITICAL FORUM, not one about a video codec.
So, what software is being used to produce these clips? Anyone?
Artisticulated:
I’m 44 and you are an ignorant fool.
Sum Jung Gai is both funny and astoundingly astute.
You may go back to your Fox News broadcast…
This article is of interest beyond its use on the Mac. My understanding is that H.264 is a very scalable platform, from a 30″ Mac Cinema Display to even a cell phone. Given that, I will be curious to see how QuickTime evolves to other platforms we don’t consider now. The gnomes of Redmond are trying to open new fronts for conquest, including cell phones and cars. H.264 and QuickTime are two very important fundamental technologies that I pray will stay competitive and important in the future, because Microsoft will try to make Windows and Media Player pervasive in just about everything with a CPU and a screen.
The other day, I stopped by my local Apple Store and kicked the tires of a dual G5 Tower running Tiger. Watching an HD movie with the new QuickTime, I was blown away both by its incredible resolution, along with the ability to scale the display up and down in size while the movie was running. Apple has done a terriffic job with the new QuickTime, and I hope they can successfully evangelize it across multiple platforms.
One last thought: on Bill Gates’ FUD quote about cell phones versus iPods, one big constituent in the whole deal will be the big telcos. If they can’t make a buck charging for music downloads to the phones, they will hold up the technology. If the record companies and telcos get too greedy, the rate per song or per subscription will simply be uncompetitive with tunes from iTMS. I’m sure that as cell phones add greater capacity from either large flash drives or hard drives, they will offer competition. But I’m sure the only place you will be able to buy music for them will be from the telcos – and so far, I have yet to be impressed with how they handle anything like this.
“Curious,” all your questions are answered in the articles.
To bobs ur uncle: it would indeed be great if they could do that, but the processing power required to encode the episodes in H.264 for Torrenting would still be massive. So until they release QuickTime 7 for PC, it might be hard to get stuff like that done on a single computer. I guess you could try a Power Mac renderfarm, but I don’t know how practical that is.
I’m loving h.264. Works great on my Dual G5. But its going to force me to part with my iBook G3. Handles 320×240 at 15fps but none of the samples here ran at all on it.
Let me correct my previous post. One clip from the West Wing played well on my G3. It’s the 128 kbps 425×240 clip. The half size one. So the days of the G3 are definitely numbered now.
I was looking if someone had done a shoot out between Apple’s H.264 and Sorensen Video 3 Pro. From my experience Sorenson wins. My tests were done with Sorenson 3 Pro through Cleaner and H.264 with QuickTime. Any comments on this? Am I wrong?
My files are ment for the web
So where are your tests, Pal?