Performance comparison of HEVC reference SW, x265 and VPX on 8-bit 1080p content

Pankaj Topiwala; Wei Dai; Madhu Krishnan

doi:10.1117/12.2240255

27 September 2016 Performance comparison of HEVC reference SW, x265 and VPX on 8-bit 1080p content

Pankaj Topiwala, Wei Dai, Madhu Krishnan

Proceedings Volume 9971, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIX; 99711C (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2240255
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2016, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

This paper presents a study comparing the coding efficiency performance of three software codecs: (a) the HEVC Main Profile Reference Software; (b) the x265 codec; and (c) VP10. Note here that we are specifically testing only 8-bit performance. Performance is tabulated for 1-pass encoding on two fronts: (1) objective performance (PSNR), (2) informal subjective assessment. Finally, two approaches to coding were used: (i) constant quality; and (ii) fixed bit rate. Constant quality encoding is performed with all the three codecs for an unbiased comparison of the core coding tools. Whereas target bitrate coding is done to study the compression efficiency achieved with rate control, which can and does have a significant impact. Our general conclusion is that under constant quality coding, the HEVC reference software appears to be superior to the other two, whereas with rate control and fixed rate coding, these codecs are more on an equal footing. We remark that this latter result may be partly or mainly due to the maturity of the various rate control mechanisms in these codecs.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Pankaj Topiwala, Wei Dai, and Madhu Krishnan "Performance comparison of HEVC reference SW, x265 and VPX on 8-bit 1080p content", Proc. SPIE 9971, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIX, 99711C (27 September 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2240255

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