Kokul’s World

Just a few months ago, I would have been championing XviD as my favourite format to encode and view videos in. Why? Because it produced small file sizes with minimum loss of quality. However now I am championing a new codec as my favourite and that is the H264. Like XviD, it is cross-platform compliant.  However it does many things better than XviD and DivX codecs do.

H264 often compresses into the same or smaller file size than XviD or DivX with far less loss in quality. This means that H264 has far better quality. The difference is amazing. There are less artifacts, which is blocking or blurry edges.  Colours are also more vibrant and brighter. Honestly XviD looked pretty bad in dark scenes and colours, producing grainy images. However H264 almost never has that problem. Also, fine details are more visible in H264 than XviD, and it handles scenes with a lot of movement better than H264.

So what’s the downside? Well it requires more processing power than XviD or DivX to decode. For most modern computers (I’m talking about ones with over 1.2 Ghz in clock speed), and perhaps to some which are above 800 Mhz, most videos will decode fine with little to no lag. However if you are going to watch HD or upscaled versions, more processing power is needed. Upscaled versions which I have watched (1280 x 1024 pixels) have decoded with no problems on my P4 2.4 Ghz CPU with no lag or problems (I was using Zoom Player, and the Combined Community Codec Pack).  However, an HD movie I was trying to watch at 1080p and a resolution of 1720 x 1024 pixels brought my Pentium 4 to it’s knees. However it decoded fine on my father’s Core 2 Duo Dual Core Processor at 2.00Ghz with no problems.

Sufficient to say, H264 may require a little more processing power, but most computers should be able to handle it fine. After all, the trade-off in features and quality gained is worth it. DivX and XviD when released also required more processing power than other video codecs, but thanks to the quality, the trade-off was worth it, and it was quickly adopted.

So next time you are going to download a video, look for an H264 or x264 label anywhere. Usually it comes in an Matroska video/audio container (file extension .mkv).