How to choose between H.264 and MJPEG? Published by the best free video converter, this article aims to introduce MJPEG and H.264 to you. Meanwhile, focusing on H.264 vs MJPEG, an in-depth comparison will be conducted.
What Is H.264
Before the comparison focusing on H.264 vs MJPEG, the following content will give you an overview of H.264. Meanwhile, you will know its pros and cons.
Overview of H.264
As a popular video compression standard, H.264 is indispensable for delivering high-quality videos with excellent compression efficiency. Also known as AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10, it has much to offer in removing temporal and spatial redundancies between frames and videos. This way, transmission requirements and data storage will never bring users a headache.
More importantly, H.264 plays a crucial role in an integral multimedia experience and has outstanding compatibility, making itself have a huge user base. Simultaneously, it has been applied to a wide range of fields, including streaming platforms, surveillance cameras, video conferencing, and so on. With advanced algorithms, H.264 has struck a proper balance between quality and compression efficiency.
The Pros and Cons of H.264
There are multiple benefits brought by H.264. First of all, due to its high compression efficiency, H.264 can be an ideal choice for you to tackle short-supply storage and bandwidth. Meanwhile, with a variety of profiles, it is highly flexible. In addition, with H.264, users enable some advanced functions such as error resilience.
However, H.264 also has its limitations. Via temporal compression, although H.264 can realize the compression more efficiently, a higher latency may be inevitable. On the other hand, it compares sequential frames and encodes their differences by using advanced techniques, causing a much higher computational load than MJPEG.
What Is MJPEG
The following content will briefly introduce MJPEG and walk you through its benefits and drawbacks.
Brief Introduction to MJPEG
Standing for Motion JPEG, MJPEG refers to an outstanding video compression standard. It plays a crucial encoding role, helping get a separate JPEG image from each video frame. Plus, MJPEG utilizes no inter-frame prediction and offers images with high quality. Hence, when the extracting of individual frames is necessary for further analysis or you emphasize picture quality, MJPEG can be a preferable choice to suit your needs.
Furthermore, since MJPEG gives support for precisely capturing individual image frames and thus helps find evidence, it has been applied to a mass of occasions like surveillance and security applications. Besides, MJPEG has computational simplicity. Consequently, even if a low-power embedded system requires real-time decoding and encoding, MJPEG can serve it well.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of MJPEG
With a simple nature, MJPEG allows you to alter individual frames easily, which brings great usefulness to video editing. Additionally, it has low latency, bringing more convenience to real-time systems such as drone navigation and robotics. MJPEG pays attention to quality retention, making itself a can’t-miss choice for industries like medical imaging.
MJPEG requires a low CPU load. Therefore, it can be a better choice for users who use low-processing power devices. Unfortunately, compared with other compression algorithms, MJPEG has a lower compression rate, which makes itself limited to some extent. In the next, please read on for more details about MJPEG vs H.264.
A Comparison of H.264 and MJPEG
From 4 aspects, including CPU utilization, real-time uses, flexibility, and quality and compression, this section will conduct a detailed comparison focusing on MJPEG vs H.264.
- CPU Utilization
When you have an encoding or decoding task, CPU utilization is the first factor that you need to consider. Specifically, if your systems and devices have a low-power nature, MJPEG, which requires less CPU power, can be a better choice. On condition that you are not limited by CPU power, you can choose H.264.
- Real-Time Uses
If you attach great importance to bandwidth and storage instead of real-time uses, H.264, which may lead to high latency, can be a better option. In contrast, on condition that you focus more on real-time uses, MJPEG, which has a low-latency nature, can meet your satisfaction better.
- Flexibility
H.264 has multiple features and profiles, making itself widely used in multiple situations. In contrast, MJPEG is easier to use but has less flexibility. Hence, if you stress versatility and flexibility, just choose H.264. For those who want more simplicity, please go to MJPEG.
- Quality and Compression
H.264 enables you to enjoy a higher compression rate, allowing for a high-quality file with a small file size. However, it requires more computational load and will cause higher latency. MJPEG has a lower compression rate and requires a low computational load.
How to Convert H.264 to MJPEG
After the comparison focusing on H.264 vs MJPEG, you know better about how to choose between H.264 and MJPEG. Considering that you may want to switch between the two, below is a step-by-step guide on how to convert H.264 to MJPEG and vice versa.
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Step 1. Click on the download button above to download and install MiniTool Video Converter on your PC. Then, run MiniTool Video Converter to enter its main interface.
Step 2. Click on the Add Files button to upload your file.
Step 3. Click on the inverted arrow at the bottom right to expand the Convert all files to option. Then, navigate to the Video section and click on AVI. Then click on the Edit icon to access the Settings window.
In the pop-up window, expand the Encoder option and choose between H264 and MJPEG. Then click on the Create button to save the customization.
Step 4. In the output format window, choose HD 1080P_Custom as the output format.
Step 5. Expand the Output option by clicking the inverted arrow at the bottom left to choose a saving path for your converted file.
Step 6. Click on the Convert All button to begin your conversion task.
Step 7. Once the conversion is over, please switch to the Converted section and click on Show in folder to locate your converted file.
With the above-detailed steps, it will be effortless for you to choose H.264 or MJPEG as you want. More than that, MiniTool Video Converter also empowers you to convert your audio/video files to tons of media formats such as MP4, AC3, VOB, XVID, MP3, and so on.
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Verdict
In conclusion, this article has clarified the various aspects of H.264 and MJPEG. Through the comparison focusing on H.264 vs MJPEG, you are capable of making a better choice between the two. At last, if you are having trouble when using MiniTool Video Converter, you are free to share your questions and advice with me on Twitter. Also, you can ask for help by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Eien, who was majored in English at the university, has been an editor of MiniTool now. In his opinion, the software developed by MiniTool has brought great convenience to people, which also urges him to share more articles about the software with readers. In his daily life, Eien has a passion for singing and listening to music.