VC-1 vs. H.264 and MPEG2

[Joniii]

I don't really know which format I would like to win HD war, well Blu-Rays 50Gb sounds better for PC backup purposes. I'm wondering if there are any picture quality differences between VC-1, H.264 and MPEG2?

[Dark Shikari]

At very high bitrates like BD/HD-DVD use, the differences are much smaller than at lower bitrates. For example, at 5 megabits per second for 1080p video, MPEG-2 would be a complete mess of blocks, VC-1 would be ugly, and H.264 would be pretty tolerable.

But at 20 megabits and above, the difference is less obvious. VC-1 and H.264 are pretty close in quality, H.264 being very mildly superior but not noticeably at those bitrates. MPEG-2 is noticeably worse though.

[Sharktooth]

it also depends on the movie. the more complex the movie, the better (h.264) codecs will shine.

[guada2]

@Dark Shikari
For example, at 5 megabits per second for 1080p video, MPEG-2 would be a complete mess of blocks, VC-1 would be ugly, and H.264 would be pretty tolerable.

I suppose that HD Rec is a bad thing ! no...

Bye.

[foxyshadis]

Sony's H.264 encoder is worse than Microsoft's VC-1 by a pretty significant margin, though, and a lot of early discs used that. That's the other big reason VC-1 got so much early traction (besides being initially free), but now mainconcept and elecard are in some authoring houses.

[zambelli]

Comparing codecs comes down to comparing encoder implementations. VC-1 and H.264 are certainly in a different league than MPEG-2, but which one is better out of those two could very much depend on encoder, scenario and content used. Both codecs are certainly capable of delivering great quality at efficient bitrates.