As you can see, a bad H.264 encoder (e.g. Apple's) can barely compete with Xvid.
The entirety of my work on x264 is contained in the past 2 years of development. The psychovisual optimizations alone probably account for at least a 50-70% improvement in compression quality.
See:
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/qual...
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=164
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=102
As you can see, a bad H.264 encoder (e.g. Apple's) can barely compete with Xvid.
The entirety of my work on x264 is contained in the past 2 years of development. The psychovisual optimizations alone probably account for at least a 50-70% improvement in compression quality.