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• 11.04.2022 Report release

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In MSU FPGA/Hardware-accelerated/Ultra-fast Video Codecs Comparison 2021, we analyzed 4 hardware and 3 software codecs. The speed requirement for all platforms was 60 fps. Some of the participants could not reach speed requirement, but we decided to publish all results anyway to show the current landscape. 50 FullHD video sequences were used.

• The places below are given by quality scores
• Encoders with scores closer than 1% share one place

Hardware-accelerated and ultra-fast codecs testing objectives

The main goal of this report is the presentation of a comparative evaluation of the quality of new and existing codecs using objective measures of assessment. The comparison was done using settings provided by the developers of each codec. Nevertheless, we required all presets to satisfy minimum speed requirement on the particular use case. The main task of the comparison is to analyze different encoders for the task of transcoding video – e.g., compressing video for personal use.

Test Hardware Characteristics for CPU encoders

• CPU: Intel Socket 1151 Core i7 8700K (Coffee Lake) (3.7Ghz, 6C12T, TDP 95W)
• Mainboard: ASRock Z370M Pro4
• RAM: Crucial CT16G4DFD824A 2x16GB (totally 32 GB) DIMM DDR4 2400MHz CL15
• OS: Windows 10 x64, Linux

Test Hardware Characteristics for GPU encoders

• CPU: Intel Socket 1151 Core i7 8700K (Coffee Lake) (3.7Ghz, 6C12T, TDP 95W)
• GPU: NVIDIA TITAN RTX
• Mainboard: ASRock Z370M Pro4
• RAM: Crucial CT16G4DFD824A 2x16GB (totally 32 GB) DIMM DDR4 2400MHz CL15
• OS: Windows 10 x64, Linux

Test Hardware Characteristics for FPGA encoders

• CPU: Intel Socket 1151 Core i7-6700K (Skylake) (4.00GHz, 4C8T, TDP 91 W)
• FPGA: Xilinx Alveo U250 Accelerator
• Mainboard: ASUSTeK Z170-K
• RAM: Crucial CT16G4DFD824A 4x8GB (totally 32 GB) DIMM DDR4 2100MHz CL15
• OS: CentOS 7

See more on Call For Codecs 2021 page

Videos

Videos for testing set were chosen from MSU video collection via a voting among comparison participants, organizers and an independend expert.

Final video set consists of 50 sequences including new videos from Vimeo and media.xiph.org derf's collection.

Descriptions of all test videos are presented in a separate PDF provided with the report.

Computer Graphics and Multimedia Laboratory of Moscow State University:

• 17+ years working in the area of video codec analysis and tuning using objective quality metrics and subjective comparisons.
• 30+ reports of video codec comparisons and analysis (H.265, H.264, AV1, VP9, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, decoders' error recovery).
• Methods and algorithms for codec comparison and analysis development, separate codec's features and codec's options analysis.

Strong and Weak Points of Your Codec

• Deep encoder parts analysis (ME, RC on GOP, mode decision, etc).
• Weak and strong points for your encoder and complete information about encoding quality on different content types.
• Encoding Quality improvement by the pre and post filtering (including technologies licensing).

Independent Codec Estimation Comparing to Other Codecs for Different Use-cases

• Comparative analysis of your encoder and other encoders.
• We have direct contact with many codec developers.
• You will know place of your encoder between other newest well-known encoders (compare encoding quality, speed, bitrate handling, etc.).

Encoder Features Implementation Optimality Analysis

Thanks

Other Materials

Project updated by
Server Team and MSU Video Group

Project sponsored by YUVsoft Corp.

Project supported by MSU Graphics & Media Lab