What Video Codec Do you like best?
- Thread starter IceDigger
- Start date
Divx Pro. You don't have to worry about finding a good build or anything, and it provides superior compression. It has two disadvantages: It isn't free, and it isn't always fast (although much of the latter depends on the other software you're using). But it is still the best, and I like it the most. Xvid is usually pretty good too, if you've got a reliable build (and not one of the ones that produces artifacts that make me feel ill). I'd probably use Xvid over the standard (free) Divx.
WM9 has actually seen some work recently, if you check out the WMP10 site. They've got a couple of new specific-purpose video and audio codec, including a WMA meant for speech with some music at very low bitrates, a lossless WMA, and various WMV, like the image-panning one. It's fairly easy to work with, too. But when it comes down to it, xvid and divx both beat WMV9 codec on the full frame video front, and you can always use WMA, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC, whatever alongside the Divx/xvid video stream.
WM9 has actually seen some work recently, if you check out the WMP10 site. They've got a couple of new specific-purpose video and audio codec, including a WMA meant for speech with some music at very low bitrates, a lossless WMA, and various WMV, like the image-panning one. It's fairly easy to work with, too. But when it comes down to it, xvid and divx both beat WMV9 codec on the full frame video front, and you can always use WMA, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC, whatever alongside the Divx/xvid video stream.
No. As it290 mentioned, quicktime is a file container, just a really proprietary one. Theora is part of the Ogg project. Ogg is the file container (.ogm for mixed and .ogg for audio-only files AFAIK). The Ogg Vorbis codec is the audio codec, and Ogg Theora is a modified version of VP3. Usually those are understood to be under the Ogg umbrella, so they just call them Vorbis and Theora, respectively. When you say "Ogg", it usually is supposed to mean the containers or project as a whole, but most people associate it with Vorbis alone, because that is how they started.
Anyway, despite Cloud's expected fanboyism, WM9 actually has some good aspects. I'm sure he knows jack about it, but that never stops anyone from bashing something. It's not my favorite, as I explained before, and I'd rather use Divx or Xvid. But MS actually does have some interesting codecs, and you can rip to WMA or MP3 without restrictions very easily with WMP10, as well as burn data/audio discs and transfer to portables. I'd sure as hell take it over any Apple solution, which are usually a PITA to work with and extra proprietary. They're worse than MS now. Did you hear about how they got all pissy when Real broke their FairPlay protection so users could transfer files they bought from other sources to iPod? Ironic that Apple would name it "FairPlay" when they don't want anyone else to touch it.
Ah. Well props to whoever pieced together .ogm then. There's no reason that the ogg container shouldn't be used for other stuff. Besides, it's always nice to be able to distinguish audio from video just by the extension. Although Matroska (.mkv) has it beat on features anyway, and is probably the most advanced file container I've dealt with.