// May 9th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // General
Microsoft MPEG-4
While this codec encodes AVIs, it is actually the ancestor of Microsoft’s current Windows Media codecs. After version three (which was not an AVI codec), the codec was renamed to Windows Media 7. Despite the fact that it is obsolete from a technical standpoint, the MS MPEG-4 v2 codec is still widely used because it encodes to AVIs, which are generally more convenient than Windows Media files (see the Windows Media section for more info). MS MPEG-4 v2 still gives very good quality and at very small sizes.
Quality: Very Good. While subsequent Windows Media codecs give better quality, the differences can be rather subtle, so the quality given by MS MPEG-4 v2 is usually more than adequate for most video sources. At very low bit rates (under 500 kbps) blockiness becomes very noticeable. (more…)