Comparison of video codecs

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This is a comparison of video codecs.

Contents

Basic general information about the codecs: creator/company, license/price etc.

Codec Creator/Maintainer First public release date Latest stable version Cost (USD) License Patented
Blackbird Forbidden Technologies plc January 2006 2 Included in FORscene Proprietary Yes
Cinepak Created by Radius, Inc.

Currently maintained by Compression Technologies, Inc.[1]

 1992 ? Included in Microsoft Windows ? ?
Sorenson 3 Sorenson Media July 1, 2001 4.5 Squeeze 4.3 for Flash (Win/Mac) $249 Full; $199 Upgrade

Squeeze 4.3 Compression Suite (Win/Mac) $399 Full; $159 Upgrade

 Proprietary Yes
Theora Xiph.org α1: September 25, 2002 α7: June 20, 2006[2] Free BSD-style[3] No[*]
RealVideo RealNetworks 1997 RealVideo 10 ? ? ?

*  The Xiph.Org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for everyone, for any purpose.[4]

Codec Mac OS X Unix & Unix-like Windows
Blackbird Yes Yes Yes
Cinepak Yes Yes Yes
Sorenson 3 Yes Yes (3rd party) Yes
Theora Yes Yes Yes
RealVideo Yes Yes Yes

Codec Compression type Basic algorithm Highest supported bitrate Highest supported resolution Variable frame rate
Blackbird Lossy compression ? ? 384×288 (PAL), 320×240 (NTSC) Yes
Cinepak Lossy compression Vector quantization[5] ? ? ?
Sorenson 3 ? ? ? ? ?
Theora Lossy compression Discrete cosine transform 2 Gibit/s 1048560×1048560[6][7] Partial[*]
RealVideo Lossy compression ? ? ? ?

*  Theora streams with different frame rates can be chained in the same file, but each stream has a fixed frame rate.[6]

Portal:free software
 free software Portal

  1. ^ Compression Technologies, Inc., current maintainer of Cinepak
  2. ^ Theora development website
  3. ^ Theora.org FAQ: what is the license for Theora?
  4. ^ Theora.org FAQ: isn't VP3 a patented technology?
  5. ^ Technical description of the Cinepak codec
  6. ^ a b Theora format specificationPDF (852 KiB)
  7. ^ Requires about 3 terabytes per uncompressed frame at maximum resolution (pg 37, Theora I Specification. March 7, 2006)


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