[olug] DVD Ripping

[Will Langford]

http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/pdf/msu_mpeg_4_avc_h264_codec_comparison_2007_eng.pdf

Lengthy PDF.

Synopsis: x264 does very well.  Quality and bitrate to 'matching quality'
are both excellent.

Copy and paste of some relevant info (start around page 29):

4.4.2 Movies
The leading encoders in this category are x264 and MainConcept. The quality
of the AMD encoder is again rather low.
4.4.2.1 High Quality Preset
The x264 encoder demonstrates better quality for all sequences except the
"Lord of the Rings" sequence (for approximately 10% of the bitrate and for a
fixed quality), but it yields slower performance at the same bitrate for
30%. For the "Lord of the Rings" sequence, the MainConcept encoder is faster
and yields better quality. The bitrate handling algorithm of these codecs is
acceptable for this category. The Intel IPP codec once again holds third
place. In some cases the Intel IPP encoder performs more poorly than the
MainConcept encoder, but it still provides rather stable performance.
Comparison of the XviD and AMD codecs with other codecs is difficult, as
they are faster and show lower quality for a fixed bitrate. The objective
quality of the AMD encoder is lower than that of XviD, but the AMD encoder
is approximately 10 times faster. Also, the AMD encoder has problems with
bitrate handling (for some sequences the bitrate exceeds the target rate by
100%).

4.4.3 HDTV
4.4.3.1 High Quality Preset
The x264 and MainConcept codecs demonstrate the highest quality among all
the codecs tested in this comparison. The encoding quality of the x264 codec
is greater than quality the MainConcept encoder, the speed is slower. The
third-place encoder, rated by quality, is the Intel IPP codec. Nevertheless,
it is slower than MainConcept. The AMD and XviD codecs, as usual, are faster
than all the competitors.

4.4.4 Overall Conclusions
Overall, the leaders in this comparison are the MainConcept and x264
encoders, with the Intel IPP encoder taking a strong third place. The XviD
(MPEG-4 ASP) codec is, on average, better than the AMD and Artemis x264
codecs, which proves that the AMD and Artemis x264 encoders did not use all
of the features of the H.264 standard. The main reason of AMD encoder low
quality is very high speed of the encoder. The XviD codec demonstrates
difficulties with bitrate handling algorithms, so does the AMD encoder as
well.

The overall ranking of the codecs tested in this comparison is as follows:
1. MainConcept
2. x264
3. Intel IPP
4. XviD
5. Artemis x264
6. AMD
This rank based only on quality results of encoders (see Figure 35).
Encoding speed is not considered here.
The difference between the MainConcept and x264 encoders is not overly
significant, so these two encoders are both the clear leaders in this
comparison. The developers of the Artemis x264 encoder do not provide a High
Quality preset, so its ranking is based solely on the results for the High
Speed preset. The quality of the Artemis x264 (H.264) codec is lower than
that of XviD (MPEG-4 ASP), which means that the developers of Artemis x264
did not employ the x264 encoder, which they modified, to its fullest
potential. The low quality of AMD could be explained by its high encoding
speed; the developers of the AMD codec did not provide a "slow" preset for
use in this comparison, so tests of the AMD codec only used a very fast
preset (5 to 10 times faster than that of its competitors).