Below you will find frame grabs from every popular video format used today. All videos were encoded with a bitrate of 406 kbit/sec given to the video. All the video files ended up being about the same size (approximately 8.2 MB). I believe the pictures will speak for themselves.
It is also important to note that these comparisons are only relevant to cartoon videos at quarter resolution (320 x 240). Working with video at 640 x 480 is an entirely different matter, which I may or may not devote another guide to in the future.
Uncompressed Video, 320 x 240 before cropping
This is what the source image used to make the compressed videos
looked like.
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DivX Fast-Motion, crispness of 100, 4 sec/keyframe There are minor compression artifacts at this bitrate, rendering the codec unable to produce solid areas of color.
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DivX Low-Motion, crispness of 100, 4 sec/keyframe There are minor compression artifacts at this bitrate, rendering the codec unable to produce solid areas of color.
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MPEG-1, encoded with TMPGEnc b12, highest quality settings with 2-pass VBR There are horrible compression artifacts at this bitrate, rendering the codec unable to produce solid areas of color. MPEG-1 was optimized for higher bitrates (and thus larger file sizes).
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MPEG-2, encoded with TMPGEnc b12, highest quality settings with 2-pass VBR There are horrible compression artifacts at this bitrate, rendering the codec unable to produce solid areas of color. MPEG-2 was optimized for higher bitrates (and thus larger file sizes).
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Sorenson Video 2.1, highest quality settings, smoothing, VBR It got lucky in this shot. :) There is blockiness
present throughout the video, and a color space conversion wrecks the
original color information. |
Windows Media Video 7, image quality of 100, 4 sec/keyframe, 5 second buffer There are minor compression artifacts at this bitrate,
rendering the codec unable to produce solid areas of
color. |
RealVideo 8, highest quality settings, 2-pass VBR
Virtually no compression artifacts, closest to the source
video.
Uncompressed Video
(To compare with the above pictures.)
