10/19/2010 Comparison of H.

264 and VC-1 - Wikiped…

Comparison of H.264 and VC-1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

H.264 and VC-1 are popular video compression standards gaining use in
the industry as of 2007.

Contents
1 Overview
2 Terminology
3 Features
4 References
5 External links

Overview
VC-1 H.264
Designed to meet a variety of industry
needs with many profiles and levels,
Designed to allowing for varying compression,
offer very high quality and CPU usage levels, where
image quality the lowest level is for portable
Goals
with excellent devices, designed with low CPU
compression usage in mind, while the high levels
efficiency[1] are designed with very high quality
and compression efficiency in
mind[citation needed]
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Supports studio archiving

Supports 4:2:0
Example requirements with 4:4:4 color space;
compression /
industry use separate black and white (BW) video
color space[2]
mode
Licensing costs Similar[3][4][5]
? [6]AVC/H264 Licensing costs and
Not free. terms from MPEG LA.
Reference [7] Reference encoder and decoder
decoder,
Documentation free as well.[8] Additionally, JVT &
comes with
external M4IF mailing lists are available where
documentation. one may receive answers on AVC
related questions.

Terminology
All sources for the below information are from the respective
specifications listed in the overview section.

Feature VC-1 H.264

16x16, 16x8, 8x16, 8x8, 8x4, 4x8,
Partition sizes 16x16 and 8x8[9]
and 4x4
Integer 8x8, 4x8, 8x4, and 4x4; 8x8 available in High Profile
transform 4x4 only
Frame Used for progressive or interlaced content
Macroblock
16x16 only
sizes
Two dimensional vector offset from current position
Motion vector
to reference frame
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Picture A field or frame

Skipped
No data is encoded for macroblock
macroblock

Features
VC-1 H.264
Bitstream
single bit stream NAL and byte stream
formats
In advanced profile, each SPS (sequence
Bitstream Data Unit has its parameter set),
own header. PPS (picture
Bitstream format
Simple and Main profile parameters set),
provide neither sequence nor slice header,
entry point headers. macroblock
Deblocking In-loop filter and overlap
In-loop only
filter transform
Only supported in
CABAC No Main and higher
profiles
Variable Only in High profile
Yes
transform size and above
Contiguous (integer number Contiguous or non-
Slice
of macroblock rows only) contiguous
Sub-pixel 6-tap filter for half
interpolation bicubic, bilinear pixels; averaging for
methods quarter pixels
Variable Length
Yes
Coding

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B frame used
for predicting Yes
other pictures

References
1. ^ Loomis, Jay; Mike Wasson. "VC-1 Technical Overview"
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/
vc1techoverview.aspx#Conclusion) . Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/
vc1techoverview.aspx#Conclusion.
2. ^ SMPTE Technology Committee C24 on Video Compression
Technology (2005-08-23). SMPTE421M: SMPTE Draft Standard
for Television.
3. ^ "VC-1 Patent Portfolio License Briefing"
(http://www.mpegla.com/vc1/vc1web.ppt) (PowerPoint). MPEG
LA. 2007-11-05. http://www.mpegla.com/vc1/vc1web.ppt.
4. ^ "Windows Media Licensing Royalties for Final Products"
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/final.
aspx) . Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/final.a
spx.
5. ^ "AVC Patent Portfolio License Briefing"
(http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avcweb.ppt) (PowerPoint). MPEG LA.
2007-12-12. http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avcweb.ppt.
6. ^ "AVC/H264 Licensing costs and terms from MPEG LA"
(http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx) .
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx.
7. ^ "H.264: Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services"
(http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-200305-S) . March 2003.
http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-200305-S.
8. ^ "H.264/AVC Software Coordination"
(http://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/tml/) .
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http://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/tml/.
9. ^ Goldman, Matthew; Alois Bock. "Advanced Compression
Technologies for High Definition"
(http://www.iee.org/OnComms/PN/multimediacomms/Alois%20Boc
k.pdf) . TANDBERG Television.
http://www.iee.org/OnComms/PN/multimediacomms/Alois%20Bock
.pdf.

External links
AVC/H264 Licensing costs and terms from MPEG LA
(http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx)
EEtimes comparison of video codecs
(http://i.cmpnet.com/videsignline/2006/03/ti-table1.jpg) [1]
(http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=184417335&pgno=4)
NAB2005 presentation: codec comparison slides 13-14
(http://www.m4if.org/exhibitions/NAB2005/presentations/session3-
cvandusen.pdf)
Codec challenge comparison on Doom9 with professional VC1
encoder, PeP, and x264 for H264 => x264 win the first round
(http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=128498)
Microsoft employee discusses differences between VC-1 and H.264
(http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?
p=9931723&&#post9931723)
Comparison at Doom9 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?
p=674819#post674819)
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Categories: Video compression

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