Via Slashdot: a comparison of hotshot video codecs on Doom9, which is, um, a site for enthusiasts of DVD backup. Regardless, they are in the position to know something about what codecs do well under what conditions, so if you’re bundling an animation up for full-frame, rock-solid playback, you would do well to skim the article and learn what works. The testing methodology is informative in itself, listing tools that you can download and use yourself.

A poster on Slashdot notes that these tests are run on video source that had been compressed once before (these are DVD backups, so the sources have already been compressed with MPEG2, decompressed, and then recompressed). Still interesting to compare relative performance, I say, particularly if you’re doing homebrew video for work instead of with million-dollar master sources.

Technologies I wasn’t aware of until now:

• H.264/AVC, which is coming in the next release of Mac OS X “Tiger”, and is an open standard to boot
• Wavelet-based video compression