4 ms·

Has h265 got to the point where it's always in every case better than h264? I don't need to think about it anymore?

wwwhizz 7y ago
Define better. It's more CPU/GPU intensive, is not as widely supported, and there probably are more downsides. Better quality at the same bitrate? For most use-cases: yes.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Video codecs becoming more CPU intensive was actually a point when many casual users in my circle upgraded their notebooks. These devices lasted 15 years in some some cases. But videos not playing correctly was too much. Hardware vendors should develop H266.
  - anticensor 7y ago
    It has already been developed: Versatile Video Codec.
  - zeotroph 7y ago
    The MPEG group has tried to squeeze too much out of their h264 and h265 codecs, so other interested parties developed the totally free (with a patent-MAD clause) AV1 codec. I guess there will be no widely supported h266.
  - llampx 7y ago
    Try decoding or encoding AV1. You'll want to upgrade to a 64-core Threadripper.
  - bipson 7y ago
    h266 would be pointless for your problem. There is something for you to understand here: CPU/GPU "intensiveness" of a codec depends, and an increased computational overhead of newer codecs is always to be expected. The more efficient a coded (perceived "quality" per bit), the more complicated the computations of decoding need to be. That's why most (consumer) CPUs built in the last decade have hardware decoding support (having a dedicated hardware implementation is always more efficient than running on the CPU) - and often even hardware encoding support. The difference between h26x decoders must not need even that big (depending on the implementation). Widespread use of h264 killed most notebooks because of the missing hardware decoder. h266 would with 99% guarantee never run more efficient on the same hardware than h265, unless we find some magic to achieve better-then-h264 encoding with MPEG1 complexity, and if this was easy, why was h265 not that. And then there is AV1, which makes any newer MPEG-LA standard pointless anyway. You just need to wait for the respective widespread use of the hardware en-/decoders (and efficient encoder implementations I guess).
    - josteink 7y ago
      > The more efficient a coded (perceived "quality" per bit), the more complicated the computations of decoding need to be. That doesn’t have to be true. Only encoding is guaranteed to be more intensive. What happens when more efficient encodings are developed though is usually not bitrate going down, but instead it is kept on the same rate to provide a higher image-resolution/quality for the resulting video. And that means more pixels to render, and that means more work on the decoding end.
    - cellularmitosis 7y ago
      I parsed his statement the opposite way: “if hardware vendors want to drum up some business, they should develop h265+1, which will trigger the next round of laptop upgrades because it will be too cpu-intensive to work on devices which haven’t been upgraded in 15 years.”
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Last I heard, there's also encode times being ass.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    MPEG2 used to require dedicated PCI-[eX] cards to offload the encoding from the CPU as the CPU couldn't do it fast enough to handle real-time. Now CPUs can do multi-times real speed. H.264 also had add-on cards to enable faster than CPU encodes. Now, CPUs handle. Currently, H.265 pushes CPUs to their limits. Tomorrow? H.265 will be fast, and the next H.2xx will be causing us to wait. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
ekianjo 7y ago
it will be better the day it is supported in most browsers. We are SO FAR away from that. https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc
- throw0101a 7y ago
  See also the open/royalty-free AV1: * https://caniuse.com/#search=av1 https://caniuse.com/#search=av1 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 There also seems to be VVC? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding
sp332 7y ago
If you haven't switched yet, maybe just wait for AV1.
ksec 7y ago
First, both H.264 and H.265 are standards only. They are not encoders. And their reference encoder are not meant to be used for anything other than testing Encoding Models, which is different to AV1. So you need to talk about their respective encoder ( e.g x264 and x265 ) and bitrate. For example, if you are doing 2K to 4K encoding in Sub 3Mbps. x265 will win hands down. Especially for Anime. Things started to get blurry once you are doing doing Higher Bitrate per Pixel. For Example. 4Mbps for 720 or 1080P, a year ago ( or may be closer to 2 years now ) there are titles that x264 will still win against x265. The same goes for 10+Mbps range for 4K. But x265 has improved a lot, so I am not sure if that is still the case. And Beamr 5 [1] is a H.265 encoder that does wonder at low bitrate. In short, encoder matter. [1] https://beamr.com/vanguard-by-beamr-content-adaptive-hevc-codec-sdk https://beamr.com/vanguard-by-beamr-content-adaptive-hevc-co...

Define better. It's more CPU/GPU intensive, is not as widely supported, and there probably are more downsides. Better quality at the same bitrate? For most use-cases: yes.

raxxorrax 7y ago
Video codecs becoming more CPU intensive was actually a point when many casual users in my circle upgraded their notebooks. These devices lasted 15 years in some some cases. But videos not playing correctly was too much. Hardware vendors should develop H266.
- anticensor 7y ago
  It has already been developed: Versatile Video Codec.
- zeotroph 7y ago
  The MPEG group has tried to squeeze too much out of their h264 and h265 codecs, so other interested parties developed the totally free (with a patent-MAD clause) AV1 codec. I guess there will be no widely supported h266.
- llampx 7y ago
  Try decoding or encoding AV1. You'll want to upgrade to a 64-core Threadripper.
- bipson 7y ago
  h266 would be pointless for your problem. There is something for you to understand here: CPU/GPU "intensiveness" of a codec depends, and an increased computational overhead of newer codecs is always to be expected. The more efficient a coded (perceived "quality" per bit), the more complicated the computations of decoding need to be. That's why most (consumer) CPUs built in the last decade have hardware decoding support (having a dedicated hardware implementation is always more efficient than running on the CPU) - and often even hardware encoding support. The difference between h26x decoders must not need even that big (depending on the implementation). Widespread use of h264 killed most notebooks because of the missing hardware decoder. h266 would with 99% guarantee never run more efficient on the same hardware than h265, unless we find some magic to achieve better-then-h264 encoding with MPEG1 complexity, and if this was easy, why was h265 not that. And then there is AV1, which makes any newer MPEG-LA standard pointless anyway. You just need to wait for the respective widespread use of the hardware en-/decoders (and efficient encoder implementations I guess).
  - josteink 7y ago
    > The more efficient a coded (perceived "quality" per bit), the more complicated the computations of decoding need to be. That doesn’t have to be true. Only encoding is guaranteed to be more intensive. What happens when more efficient encodings are developed though is usually not bitrate going down, but instead it is kept on the same rate to provide a higher image-resolution/quality for the resulting video. And that means more pixels to render, and that means more work on the decoding end.
  - cellularmitosis 7y ago
    I parsed his statement the opposite way: “if hardware vendors want to drum up some business, they should develop h265+1, which will trigger the next round of laptop upgrades because it will be too cpu-intensive to work on devices which haven’t been upgraded in 15 years.”
Hamuko 7y ago
Last I heard, there's also encode times being ass.
- dylan604 7y ago
  MPEG2 used to require dedicated PCI-[eX] cards to offload the encoding from the CPU as the CPU couldn't do it fast enough to handle real-time. Now CPUs can do multi-times real speed. H.264 also had add-on cards to enable faster than CPU encodes. Now, CPUs handle. Currently, H.265 pushes CPUs to their limits. Tomorrow? H.265 will be fast, and the next H.2xx will be causing us to wait. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

ekianjo 7y ago

it will be better the day it is supported in most browsers. We are SO FAR away from that. https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc

throw0101a 7y ago
See also the open/royalty-free AV1: * https://caniuse.com/#search=av1 https://caniuse.com/#search=av1 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 There also seems to be VVC? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding

sp332 7y ago

If you haven't switched yet, maybe just wait for AV1.

ksec 7y ago

First, both H.264 and H.265 are standards only. They are not encoders. And their reference encoder are not meant to be used for anything other than testing Encoding Models, which is different to AV1. So you need to talk about their respective encoder ( e.g x264 and x265 ) and bitrate. For example, if you are doing 2K to 4K encoding in Sub 3Mbps. x265 will win hands down. Especially for Anime. Things started to get blurry once you are doing doing Higher Bitrate per Pixel. For Example. 4Mbps for 720 or 1080P, a year ago ( or may be closer to 2 years now ) there are titles that x264 will still win against x265. The same goes for 10+Mbps range for 4K. But x265 has improved a lot, so I am not sure if that is still the case. And Beamr 5 [1] is a H.265 encoder that does wonder at low bitrate. In short, encoder matter. [1] https://beamr.com/vanguard-by-beamr-content-adaptive-hevc-codec-sdk https://beamr.com/vanguard-by-beamr-content-adaptive-hevc-co...