> Compared to x264, it offers 15-20% better compression rates, but is ~5x slower.
This is interesting. H.265 and VP9 claim to use nearly 50% lower bitrate at the same quality level as H.264. Is this just a case of x264 being really well optimized that VP9 can only compress 20% better at the same quality?
A few reasons: (1) x264 is better optimized for metrics, especially PSNR. Example: removing --tune=psnr gives x264 a 12% decrease in its PSNR score in this test set (!); (2) the resolution here is only 360p, and as resolution goes down, so do gains versus codecs optimized for high-resolution content (like HEVC/VP9); (3) this article uses inverse notation, so instead of "H264 uses 50% more bits than X for same quality" (which is the same as X using 33% less bits than H264 for same quality), this article says "Eve uses 15-20% less bits than x264 for same quality".
This is really the biggest one. Google has been using low-resolution test material for VP10, and back in September [1] were claiming only a 10% reduction over VP9 on CIF resolution material (352x288). Neither VP9 nor HEVC get anywhere close to their claimed 50% improvement over H.264 on this kind of material (both save around 20%).
So seeing 7...8% reductions at similar resolutions just from a better encoder is pretty significant. It would be great to see how it scales beyond 720p.
"We are hoping to test it with customers who are willing to pay for it, so we can build a business around it that can sustain its development and pay the rent etc."
The article leaves out what is my opinion the #1 reason to use H.264 - hardware decoding support. When I watch VP9 videos, the decoder runs in software on the cpu, draining the battery faster than H.264 which can be decoded in hardware with a separate decoding chip.
You slightly overstate the case, since VP9 can be decoded in hardware in various devices, though they are much less numerous than those with h.264 support.
What I'd personally rank as the #1 issue would be the refusal of Apple to support VP9 (Microsoft only recently having got on board) So a single file can't be used by your whole audience.
Even if Apple says yes today there's a lot of their legacy hardware out there.
So this leaves mostly high volume sites that have multiple encodes anyway, and can justify it on quality/bandwidth or those taking a moral stance on the issue, like wikipedia.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 42.2 ms ] threadThis is interesting. H.265 and VP9 claim to use nearly 50% lower bitrate at the same quality level as H.264. Is this just a case of x264 being really well optimized that VP9 can only compress 20% better at the same quality?
This is really the biggest one. Google has been using low-resolution test material for VP10, and back in September [1] were claiming only a 10% reduction over VP9 on CIF resolution material (352x288). Neither VP9 nor HEVC get anywhere close to their claimed 50% improvement over H.264 on this kind of material (both save around 20%).
So seeing 7...8% reductions at similar resolutions just from a better encoder is pretty significant. It would be great to see how it scales beyond 720p.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkz1ZvejmEc&list=PLQLpBN3oI7... (sorry for the YouTube link, I couldn't find slides).
Why is it on gnome.org?!
Useless, moving on.
If you don't want to pay for this, then just use libvpx.
In any case, it's good to see another entry in the one-horse race of VP(9) encoders.
What I'd personally rank as the #1 issue would be the refusal of Apple to support VP9 (Microsoft only recently having got on board) So a single file can't be used by your whole audience.
Even if Apple says yes today there's a lot of their legacy hardware out there.
So this leaves mostly high volume sites that have multiple encodes anyway, and can justify it on quality/bandwidth or those taking a moral stance on the issue, like wikipedia.