Test Drive of Apple's H.264 Video Codec
I took Apple’s H.264 video codec for a test drive tonight. The new codec has two main strengths. It looks good and it generates small files. I installed the Quicktime 7 Public Preview for Windows (which is my platform) and registered to get the Pro license ($30 I think). Once you go Pro, you can export movies and enjoy some of the other advanced features like viewing videos full-screen (I know, that’s not so advanced).
My goal was to use the codec so I can send my dad better quality video than the video I’ve been sending him so far. Actually, I don’t send him video since he only has dial-up and I figure it would take him way too long to play anything I could send. Goals are goals so I pushed forward.
I first wanted to test the new H.264 codec against the MPEG4 codec I’ve been using. I used my infamous “Dinosaur Battle” video where my kids duke it out pretending they are battling dinosaurs. The first try was a high-quality half-size video at the full framerate of 29.97fps (I read somewhere that it’s not exactly 30 because 29.97 eliminate some problems with color that would result it the framerate were exactly 30).
(click to enlarge)
The file was a raw AVI from my Canon GL2 camcorder. The raw DV file was pretty noisy due to the low light so I wasn’t starting off with anything special. You can plainly see that the clip on the left has a lot less noise, better color, and better contrast. Guess what? It’s about 20MB smaller too! The H.264 file was 47.7MB and the MPEG4 file was 66.4MB.
To create the video, I simply dragged in the AVI file into my QuickTime window and pulled down the “File” menu and selected “Export.” I picked a filename and clicked on “Options” where I was presented with this screen:
I clicked on “Settings” in the Video section and selected these settings:
(click to enlarge)
That’s it.
Now for my goal. I figure a quarter-sized video at maybe 15fps would do the trick. I limited the data rate to 56Kbps, which assumes that my dad will actually get the theoretical maximum bandwidth. We all know that won’t happen so I assume he’ll have to wait while things get buffered.
The resulting file rendered much more quickly since there were a lot less bits to crunch. It weighed in at a miniscule 1.71MB. When I opened it up I was disgusted by an unrecognizable blob of goo. See for yourself:
Ok, I thought to myself. Let’s more double the data rate to ISDN-like speed of 128Kbps. Dad will have to download and save this locally. Ah, the file was awesome. It was only 2.30MB and looked great (albeit a bit small):
To be complete, I rendered an MPEG4 version of this small file. It rendered much quicker, like 10x quicker. The file size was 2.58MB. Here’s a frame that we’re familiar with:
This frame is certainly not as clear and the color definition is definitely worse. The file size differences are less meaningful at these small file sizes, but the H.264 codec is still the clear winner.
In conclusuon, I don’t think a 2–3MB download will kill someone on a dial-up. This is especially true if you provide it as a web link instead of an e-mail attachment. In any case, I think my mission was quite successful.