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The main hurdle for adoption, aside from onerous patents, is waiting for hardware acceleration to be common place. What is the current state of h.265 hardware a

The main hurdle for adoption, aside from onerous patents, is waiting for hardware acceleration to be common place. What is the current state of h.265 hardware accel? Does it come with everything yet like h.264 does?

oplav 6y ago
Most Turing and above Nvidia cards have support for hardware accelerated decode of h.265 [0]. Modern Intel chips also support hardware accelerated decode (support started with Skylake [1]). Not sure about AMD. [0] https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-sup... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardwar...
- Macha 6y ago
  Right, so that's 2 of the top 10 and 4 of the top 20 gpus per the steam hardware survey, representing 10% of steam users: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey But I don't think desktops are the problem anyway as opposed to laptops/tablets. Desktop cpus are perfectly capable of decoding h265 in real time without acceleration
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Looks like most of the cards in the top 20 support H.265 4:2:0 (NVidia 10XX and up), just not 4:4:4 (NVidia 16XX and up). I don't think the steam hardware survey is a good sample of the wider computer market though - the majority of people using youtube/netflix/etc on x86 devices are probably using Intel laptop chips with integrated graphics, not $500+ dedicated GPUs. (Although presumably this is probably becoming less true over time, those low end users are moving more and more to mobile devices and smart TVs/chromecast/console, leaving workstation/gaming systems to be a larger percentage of the market)
    - namibj 6y ago
      Actually, Maxwell (9xx) already supports hardware-accelerated H.265 decoding, but on first-gen Maxwell (the higher-end GTX 970/980 at least) it's not pure hardware decoding and didn't work on Linux last I tried.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    > But I don't think desktops are the problem anyway as opposed to laptops/tablets On the Apple end of things, h265 hardware decode has been supported since the A9 (iPhone 6S, introduced 2015) They also list hardware decode support on Macs as of Intel 6th gen CPUs (Skylake, introduced 2015).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
scottmcdot 6y ago
How would you if your hardware can or cannot decode h.265? Would it simply not play or might play but stutter, or play in some compromised way?
- rubatuga 6y ago
  It would be slow and your laptop would sound like it’s taking off
- powersnail 6y ago
  I have an iPad Mini 2 from 2013. It can play H265 with software decoding, and it doesn't stutter. The only drawback is that the machine gets hot.
p1necone 6y ago
I think basically all of Intel and NVidias current offerings have hardware 265 decode. But AMD GPUs still only do h.264 (which might be a patent thing, or might just be that their target market doesn't really care. I know I don't, my gaming PC is plenty powerful to just software decode H.265 anyway, although the power efficiency gains would be nice) The mobile market I have no idea about. EDIT: I was wrong about AMD - see replies.
- pritambaral 6y ago
  > But AMD GPUs still only do h.264 Ryzen 4750U on a T14 reporting in: vainfo: VA-API version: 1.10 (libva 2.10.0) vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 20.3.4 for AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.40.0, 5.11.4-arch1-1, LLVM 11.1.0) vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc mpv also reports "Using hardware decoding (vaapi)." when I try to play an HEVC file.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Ah it looks like I was mistaken, they've had h265 encoding and decoding support for a while. Not sure where my brain got this idea from, I even have an AMD gpu atm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next
ksec 6y ago
Almost all Intel CPU sold in the past 5 years has had an HEVC hardware decoder, and 4 years if you look at HEVC 10. Most smartphone has also HEVC decode in the past 4 years. Basically the adoption hurdle has nothing to do with Hardware. Only the two A in FAANG are supportive of JVET or MPEG standard. Others prefer their "patent free" ( cough ) AV1 codec.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Netflix (the N in FAANG) uses device-appropriate codecs and formats, and defaults to AVC (H.264). Googling around shows they provide HEVC (H.265) streams to at least some devices.
  - ksec 6y ago
    Netflix do use HEVC, mostly because there isn't any other solution for high quality 4K streaming in Apple ecosystem. They use it out of absolute necessity. They have been vocal supporter of AV1. And their ex-Head of Video Encoding which now works in Facebook has a distaste for MPEG video, although that is admittedly HEVC and VVC. Everyone seems to be (mildly ) happy with AVC.
  - ip34162 6y ago
    Netflix on a recent android mobile showed that the formats supported for hardware decoding are h264 and VP9. So, thought the mobile doesn't have h265 h/w. But then installed mpv from fdroid and played h265 video and mpv said it's using h/w decoding. So for some reason, Netflix chose not to use h265.

oplav 6y ago

Most Turing and above Nvidia cards have support for hardware accelerated decode of h.265 [0]. Modern Intel chips also support hardware accelerated decode (support started with Skylake [1]). Not sure about AMD. [0] https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-sup... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardwar...

Macha 6y ago
Right, so that's 2 of the top 10 and 4 of the top 20 gpus per the steam hardware survey, representing 10% of steam users: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey But I don't think desktops are the problem anyway as opposed to laptops/tablets. Desktop cpus are perfectly capable of decoding h265 in real time without acceleration
- p1necone 6y ago
  Looks like most of the cards in the top 20 support H.265 4:2:0 (NVidia 10XX and up), just not 4:4:4 (NVidia 16XX and up). I don't think the steam hardware survey is a good sample of the wider computer market though - the majority of people using youtube/netflix/etc on x86 devices are probably using Intel laptop chips with integrated graphics, not $500+ dedicated GPUs. (Although presumably this is probably becoming less true over time, those low end users are moving more and more to mobile devices and smart TVs/chromecast/console, leaving workstation/gaming systems to be a larger percentage of the market)
  - namibj 6y ago
    Actually, Maxwell (9xx) already supports hardware-accelerated H.265 decoding, but on first-gen Maxwell (the higher-end GTX 970/980 at least) it's not pure hardware decoding and didn't work on Linux last I tried.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  > But I don't think desktops are the problem anyway as opposed to laptops/tablets On the Apple end of things, h265 hardware decode has been supported since the A9 (iPhone 6S, introduced 2015) They also list hardware decode support on Macs as of Intel 6th gen CPUs (Skylake, introduced 2015).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

scottmcdot 6y ago

How would you if your hardware can or cannot decode h.265? Would it simply not play or might play but stutter, or play in some compromised way?

rubatuga 6y ago
It would be slow and your laptop would sound like it’s taking off
powersnail 6y ago
I have an iPad Mini 2 from 2013. It can play H265 with software decoding, and it doesn't stutter. The only drawback is that the machine gets hot.

p1necone 6y ago

I think basically all of Intel and NVidias current offerings have hardware 265 decode. But AMD GPUs still only do h.264 (which might be a patent thing, or might just be that their target market doesn't really care. I know I don't, my gaming PC is plenty powerful to just software decode H.265 anyway, although the power efficiency gains would be nice) The mobile market I have no idea about. EDIT: I was wrong about AMD - see replies.

pritambaral 6y ago
> But AMD GPUs still only do h.264 Ryzen 4750U on a T14 reporting in: vainfo: VA-API version: 1.10 (libva 2.10.0) vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 20.3.4 for AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.40.0, 5.11.4-arch1-1, LLVM 11.1.0) vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc mpv also reports "Using hardware decoding (vaapi)." when I try to play an HEVC file.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Ah it looks like I was mistaken, they've had h265 encoding and decoding support for a while. Not sure where my brain got this idea from, I even have an AMD gpu atm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next

ksec 6y ago

Almost all Intel CPU sold in the past 5 years has had an HEVC hardware decoder, and 4 years if you look at HEVC 10. Most smartphone has also HEVC decode in the past 4 years. Basically the adoption hurdle has nothing to do with Hardware. Only the two A in FAANG are supportive of JVET or MPEG standard. Others prefer their "patent free" ( cough ) AV1 codec.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Netflix (the N in FAANG) uses device-appropriate codecs and formats, and defaults to AVC (H.264). Googling around shows they provide HEVC (H.265) streams to at least some devices.
- ksec 6y ago
  Netflix do use HEVC, mostly because there isn't any other solution for high quality 4K streaming in Apple ecosystem. They use it out of absolute necessity. They have been vocal supporter of AV1. And their ex-Head of Video Encoding which now works in Facebook has a distaste for MPEG video, although that is admittedly HEVC and VVC. Everyone seems to be (mildly ) happy with AVC.
- ip34162 6y ago
  Netflix on a recent android mobile showed that the formats supported for hardware decoding are h264 and VP9. So, thought the mobile doesn't have h265 h/w. But then installed mpv from fdroid and played h265 video and mpv said it's using h/w decoding. So for some reason, Netflix chose not to use h265.