An Adequate Objective Performance Evaluation of Dirac Video Codec Compared to H.264/AVC

Dirac, a relevant new open wavelet-based video codec, has been released recently. The main contribution of this paper is an adequate performance evaluation of this codec compared to the well-known H.264/AVC. This work differs significantly from previous ones which present unfair and inconclusive comparisons. Eight videos comprising three different resolutions with various degrees and kinds of motion are used to perform the simulations, as well as appropriate tuning of coding parameters for both codecs. In every case, H.264’s objective visual quality results outperform Dirac ones, but some evidences indicate Dirac might provide better subjective quality.