Comparison of image distortions from VP8, VP9, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:H.264/MPEG-4_AVC" title="Category:H.264/MPEG-4 AVC">H.264/AVC</a>, H.265/HEVC encoding with text and lineart content. (Compare <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artefact_comparison_ToS_f04428.webm" title="File:Artefact comparison ToS f04428.webm">low motion</a>, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artefact_comparison_ToS_f11811.webm" title="File:Artefact comparison ToS f11811.webm">high motion</a>)
<p>Sections of single frames taken from low-bitrate encodings of a 33 seconds, 960×400 pixel test clip with scenes from the short open movie "<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tears_of_Steel" title="Category:Tears of Steel">Tears of Steel</a>", encoded from lossless source material using libvpx 1.5, x264 r2699, and x265 1.9 in 2-pass average bitrate mode to bitrates of ~0,0214 bits per pixel (±0,24 %).
</p><p>Note that, compared to the VP8 encode, encoding took roughly 3 times longer for the VP9 file and even longer for x265 (missing support for fast first pass?) and was less than 2 times faster for x264.
Note that judging video quality by looking at still image snapshots doesn't tell the whole story, e.g. it doesn't account for temporal masking and (suboptimal) bitrate distribution.
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Be sure to watch/use the lossless encoding and not a lossy transcode with additional artefacts.
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://mango.blender.org/">Mango Blender Open Movie Project</a>, Blender Foundation
CC BY 3.0
<p><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://media.xiph.org/tearsofsteel/tearsofsteel-1080bis-png/">https://media.xiph.org/tearsofsteel/tearsofsteel-1080bis-png/</a>
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