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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Jack Schofield

DivX and WMV win Video Codec Shootout

"We picked a few of the most popular and well-supported codecs with free or cheap tools available and compressed several test clips with them. What follows is an analysis of four different popular codecs, each at two bitrates, on four different test clips. It is by no means a comprehensive review of all the video options available, but it should be a great help in figuring out what to use to compress video at home," says Extreme Tech.

Only four codecs were tested: DivX 5.1.1, Windows Media Video 9, QuickTime 6.5/Sorenson3 and QuickTime 6.5/MPEG-4.

"We give the nod to both DivX 5.1.1 and WMV9 -- it all depends on your priorities. If you're going to stick to computers as playback devices, the faster speed of DivX is welcome. If you want to play your stuff on the PDAs, portable video players, and DVD players coming out later this year and beyond, WMV9 has broader industry support and is worth the extra encoding time. Both codecs delivered quite impressive image quality."

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