VP9 vs. H.265 (HEVC) - Which Codec Is Better
A Brief Intro to VP9 and H.265
VP9 is an open, royalty-free video coding standard developed by Google. It was named "Next Gen Open Video" at the beginning of its development and also regarded as the successor of VP8.
H.265 is created based on parts of the technology of H.264 and improvement on related technology. Mainly by the enhancement of compression efficiency, robustness, error recovery ability, reduction on real-time delay and channel acquisition time, the new technology makes video coding more efficient. Meanwhile, H.265 is capable of transmitting common 720P high-definition audio and video at 1-2Mbps transmission speed.
Compared with the respective previous video coding standards, ie, H.264 and VP8, both H.265 and VP9 have the coding efficiency improved by about 50%.
But, both as the newest video codec, which one is better then? In the following, we will show you the answer from the perspectives of video quality, time consumption of video encoding, and CPU usage.
The Differences Between VP9 and H.265
1. Video Quality
The figure below presents the quality comparison of videos encoded by H.265 and VP9. The smaller the number is means better video quality. We can notice form the comparison that H.265 and VP9 show no great differentiation. The disparity of overall average score is only 0.001.
2. Time Consumption of Encoding
In terms of the comparison of coding time, VP9 won overwhelmingly against H.265. The time consumed by VP9 in encoding no matter 4k videos, or videos of 1920 and 1280 resolution is much shorter than that by H.265.
3. CPU Usage
The following figure shows the comparison of CPU consumption test of video playing on Dell Precision 390 workstation between H.265 and VP9. VP9 performed more efficiently on the CPU decoding on Firefox than on Chrome, while H.265 showed much more efficiency on DivX than on VLC Player. Having compared the data of the two coding standards, we can draw a conclusion that H.265 outperforms VP9 a little on the coding efficiency.
