Project head: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
Testing, charts, analysis: Sergey Grishin
Translating: Daria Kalinkina
Verification: Stas Soldatov

About comparison

• Number of test sequences: 9
• Number of color spaces considered: 3
  • RGB
  • YUY2
  • YV12
• Number of codecs tested: 15
  1. Alpary v2.0
  2. AVIzlib v2.2.3
  3. CamStudio GZIP v1.0
  4. CorePNG v0.8.2
  5. FFV1 ffdshow 08/08/04
  6. GLZW v1.01
  7. HuffYUV v2.1.1
  8. Lagarith v1.0.0.1
  9. LEAD JPEG v1.0.0.1
  10. LOCO v0.2
  11. MindVid v1.0 beta 1
  12. MSUlab beta v0.2.4
  13. MSUlab v0.5.2
  14. PicVideo JPEG v.2.10.0.29
  15. VBLE beta

See also:

• Big Codecs Comparison (May 2003)
• MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (January 2005)

About the comparison of lossless codecs

The name of this video codec category declares full quality losses absence - the decompressed video stream should be completely identical to original. Output quality is same for all codecs. Absolute absence of losses is a very strong requirement, therefore it is often hard to achieve compression ratios above 3:1. Some of the tested codecs have an opportunity of work in "lossy" mode; it allows to reach considerably higher compression degree with rather small losses of quality. However, only "fully lossless" mode is considered in the current comparison. The only parameter of comparison is the compression level.

Many codecs give an opportunity to adjust the parameter speed/compression ratio; it allows to tune the codec for the specific task (real-time capture or the rendering requiring loss minimization). Only maximum compression ratio result is considered in current work.

Some codecs are capable to accept input data in several color spaces (RGB, YUY2, YV12, etc.), however, compression is not always "lossless". Some codecs "silently" perform the conversion of color spaces, thus, raising a degree of compression. Quality losses coming out of such conversions are not visible, but surely exist. In the given testing work codecs is compared separately for various color spaces, thus in each color space full absence of losses is guaranteed!

Main parts of the comparison:

1. Information about codecs:
   • Vendor and version
   • Color space support
   • Logo presence in compressed video
   • Registration requirements
   and test sequences:
   • Sequence name
   • Resolution
   • Number of frames
2. Brief codecs description with screenshots
3. Codecs comparison with analysis of compression ratios for each sequence
4. Codecs comparison with analysis of total compression ratios for each codec

Download

• Download MSU Lossless Video Codecs Comparison (1.36MB, PDF)
• Download MSU Lossless Video Codecs Comparison (1.2MB, ZIP)

MSU video codecs comparisons resources:

• Introduction to Video Codecs Comparison
• Lossless Video Codecs Comparison 2004 (October 2004)
• MPEG-4 SP/ASP Video Codecs Comparison (March 2005)
• JPEG 2000 Image Codecs Comparison (September 2005)
• First Annual MPEG-4 AVC/ H.264 Video Codecs Comparison (January 2005)
• FAQ of First MPEG-4 AVC/ H.264 Comparison
• Selected Comments for First MPEG-4 AVC/ H.264 Comparison
• Second Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codec Comparison (December 2005)
• FAQ of Second Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codec Comparison
• Subjective Comparison of Modern Video Codecs (February 2006)
• MPEG-2 Video Decoders Comparison (May 2006)
• WMP and JPEG2000 Comparison (October 2006)
• Third Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (December 2006) (All versions for free!)
• Lossless Video Codecs Comparison 2007 (March 2007)
• Fourth Annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (December 2007) (All versions for free!)
• Options Analysis of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Codec x264 (December 2008)
• Fifth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2009) (All versions for free!)
• Sixth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2010)
• Seventh MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2011)
• Eighth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (May 2012)
• Ninth MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Comparison (Dec 2013)
• Tenth Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Oct 2015)
• Eleventh Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Aug 2016)
• Twelfth Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Aug 2017)
• Thirteen Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Aug 2018)
• Fourteen Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Sept 2019)
• Cloud Encoding Servoces Comparison 2019 (Dec 2019)
• Fifteen Video Codec Comparison (HEVC) (Dec 2020)
• Sixteen Video Codec Comparison (Dec 2021)
• Seventeen Video Codecs Comparisons (Nov 2022)
• Eighteenth Video Codecs Comparisons (Apr 2025)
• Nineteenth Video Codecs Comparisons (2025)
• Codec Analysis for Companies:
  • Private Video Codec Comparison
  • MSU Video Quality Measurement Tool

Other materials

Project updated by
Server Team and MSU Video Group

Project sponsored by YUVsoft Corp.

Project supported by MSU Graphics & Media Lab