MPEG2 vs. MPEG4

[Mind It]

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What is the difference of compression ratios between mpeg2 and mpeg4 compression formats for the same quality video. What is the difference of compression ratios between mpeg2 and mpeg4 compression formats for the same quality video. Can someone explain the difference between MPEG4 and MPEG2? Kindly let me know you views on the above topic.

[Eric B]

MPEG4 has the better advantage over MPEG2 in terms of picture quality, more channels in single transponders(i.e less bandwidth). Mpeg2 will most likely give you a better quality at those high bitrates, especially if you exclude mpeg4 avc codecs. Mpeg2 is simply better suited for high bitrate encodes (see DVD) as mpeg4 asp codecs (xvid & co).

[Glenny]

MPEG4 offers a better compression/quality ratio than MPEG2, but DV AVI is much better. However, the Mpeg4 codec should be able to do this at much lower bit-rates than Mpeg2.

[JonathanD]

MPEG4 is a delivery codec, and certainly not designed for editing. Indeed, it might be useful if somebody could compile a bit-rate "top-out" test for each codec, when generating encodes from the same source at the same resolution.MPEG4 and MPEG2 are video codecs, so in order for you to be able to encode to MPEG4, you will need to install the relevant codec. As with MPEG2, the codec uses intraframe compression, which in simple terms means data repeated in a frame is discarded.

MPEG4 has the better advantage over MPEG2 in terms of picture quality, more channels in single transponders. At relatively high bitrates MPEG4 isn't going to give you any better quality than MPEG2 but it can achieve the same quality at a lower bitrate than MPEG2. MPEG2 is the encoding method for DVDs, while MPEG4 is the encoding method of choice for portable devices and online use. MPEG4 was designed for low bitrate videos and its application is different from MPEG2.