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MPEG claims its new standard H.265 halves video bandwidth with no quality loss
- MattSayar 14y ago>...by 2015, [video] is predicted to account for 90 percent of all network traffic. So with this new standard, are they hoping to cut that down to 45%?
- asiekierka 14y agoNo, video quality will double instead.
- seles 14y agoActually with this new standard they are hoping to cut it down to 81.8%
- Dylan16807 14y ago80% (technically 81.8)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ehsanu1 14y agoYou mean ~82%? > 100 * (90.0/2) / (100.0 - 90.0/2) => 81.8181818181818
- sp332 14y agoThere are some details on the actual compression techniques here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Fe... although at first glance I don't see anything especially different from H.264 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Features eta: For historical and comparative purposes, here's DarkShikari's evaluation of an early prototype of an encoder. http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/360 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/360
- gillianseed 14y agoHmmm.... I'm not very versed in video encoding technology but from what I gather x264 has been adding features outside of the 'official specs' for pretty much all it's existance, and looking at the list I directly recognize things like higher bit depth and cabac from x264 settings. So I'm wondering is there some new sercet sause in h265 which makes it really much better than say x264 or is it just a new standard created around extra features which encoders like x264 already has implemented?
- sp332 14y agoAs far as I can tell they just amped up similar features from h.264. Better motion estimation, more block types in B-frames, etc. Just "more" of the same. edit: from that link I posted larger block sizes, larger transform sizes, fancier interpolation filters, improved intra prediction schemes, improved motion vector prediction, increased internal bit depth, new entropy coding schemes, and so forth.
- Jabbles 14y agoH265 has some quite innovative features (over H264), for instance instead of dividing the picture into rows of macroblocks, it's divided into quadtrees, which allow the compression algorithms to make more use of spatial similarity.
- agumonkey 14y agoI naively wonder if it cannot be generalized to octrees. To embed the inter-frame analysis into a single 3d sliding adaptive octree.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago>embed the inter-frame analysis into a single 3d sliding adaptive octree // I've no idea what this means [yet] but it sounds too awesome to ignore. H266 here we come?!?
- ksec 14y ago
- VMG 14y agoAssuming this is true across the board and not only for some edge cases, will this actually mean that video files get smaller? It seems to me that this is a case of Jevons paradox[1] where increased efficiency leads to higher consumption. Example: x264 led to 720p encoded videos with higher file size rather smaller files with lower resolution video content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- porsupah 14y agoI'd say that's a good possibility, for now. Consider when Apple rolled out 1080p downloads - the filesizes were only slightly larger than for the previous 720p versions, representing quite an efficiency boost. Adopting H.265 would seem to be able to chop the sizes down. However: - tablets and phones are unlikely to be able to take advantage of H.265 until the requisite GPU support arrives. This may hold up widespread adoption for a year or two. - for how long will the video arena remain at 1080p? I hear Sky (UK satellite broadcasting arm of the Murdoch empire) is trying to nudge toward 4K broadcasting.
- jpdoctor 14y ago> representing quite an efficiency boost. It's a somewhat backwards way of thinking about it. They chose the filesize and then set the dials for the encoding. They could have chosen the 720p to be smaller larger or the same size compared to 1080p.
- bradwestness 14y agoI'm curious what kind of hardware will be required for playback-- my homebrew'd Wii already has trouble playing back highly compressed h.264 videos. I wonder how much more power will be required to decode high-motion scenes in real time with h.265?
- sp332 14y agoI think the files will get smaller, but the hardware to encode and decode them will be a lot more complex, expensive and probably power-hungry.
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- brittohalloran 14y agoIf it's really that much better they should give themselves more credit than .001
- protomyth 14y agoI do love the difference between a marketing organization and standards organization.
- podperson 14y agoThe benefit will probably go first to someone like Apple or Google who can both supply streaming content and control the software (and ideally hardware) on devices (I imagine for low-powered devices you'll want hardware decoding, so this will prevent Apple from, say, adding support to existing AppleTVs). I guess we can all complain when the iPhone 5 doesn't support it.
- Jabbles 14y agoGoogle is heavily pushing VP8, which is supposedly royalty free. I'd be incredibly impressed if Apple could make a hardware decoder/encoder for HEVC for their next iPhone (or whichever one comes after the standard is finalised), but we won't know until then :) http://www.webmproject.org/tools/vp8-sdk/ http://www.webmproject.org/tools/vp8-sdk/
- mtgx 14y agoSamsung's Exynos 5 Dual chip supports hardware decoding for VP8, and it should land in some phone and tablet by the end of the year.
- podperson 14y agoIt will be interesting to see what happens with VP8/WebM. Really it looks like Google tried to stymie Apple (which committed itself to H264) first by trying to back Adobe/Flash and then VP8 (and announcing that H264 support would be dropped from Chrome, which AFAIK it hasn't been on any platform). Thus far I don't see VP8 achieving much and Google may just end up sticking with MPEG standards.
- taligent 14y agoGoogle is a few years too late with VP8. It would have had an opportunity to take off when H.264 was in its infancy. But now there is simply no use for it.
- taligent 14y agoIIRC the PowerVR GPU inside all the iOS devices already support hardware VP8 encoding/decoding. Apple just has no inclination to support it. And why would they ? VP8 is significantly worse than H.264 in every important way (quality, compatibility, popularity). Not to mention that Apple is on a very anti-Google path right now.
- Jabbles 14y agoThis claim is pretty accurate. Since the standard isn't finalised yet it will be a while before the hardware is developed to make it widely used in mobile devices, as it's improbable that a software encoder could be made that uses little power.
- ksec 14y agoWell at least this time it will be much faster then H.264, Hardware decoder are already in the work with many things could be reused fro H.264 HP Decoding. So unless there are any major changes HEVC decoder will be coming much quicker. Some Video Decoder IP has already begin to list HEVC decode as a feature.
- jpdoctor 14y agoI'm assuming it's proprietary like the other MPEGs - Any word on how problematic the licensing will be?
- ck2 14y agoSo it's doing it with half the minimum block size and looking far forward (and backward) in the stream. The cpu requirements must be intense. If they cannot do it with hardware accelerated video drivers for current hardware, it sounds like it will tie up multiple cores? Maybe they like the idea of making everyone rebuy hardware.
- mistercow 14y agoHmm, still no overlapping blocks, apparently. Do other people find block artifacts less distracting than I do, and that's why nobody's trying to fix it for image and video compression?
- sp332 14y agoThe deblocking filter is basically overlapping blocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deblocking_filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deblocking_filter
- mistercow 14y agoWell, no, it's not - at least not in H.264. I have not read details yet on how it works in H.265, but in general deblocking is a completely different approach to solving block aliasing. Deblocking works (very roughly) like this: look at the edges of the blocks and see if there's a sharp edge there. Now check and see how strong of an edge there is there in the original input. Depending on these two relative edge strengths, blur the block edge. That is, if there's a strong edge in the output, but not in the input, blur a lot. If the input does have a strong edge, blur less. H.264 also uses some other heuristics to decide how strong the edge filter should be, and happens to do the filtering on the encoder side as well as the decoder side, which allows for better interframe compression. So while this, in a vague mathematical sense, does provide overlapping information between blocks in a way that can be analogized to overlapping blocks, that information is far cruder than true time-domain aliasing cancellation But to answer my own previous question, the reason they don't use overlapping blocks appears to be that that the concept is very difficult to reconcile with motion compensation.
- sp332 14y agoIf you encode overlapping blocks, how would you render them? Just average the edges together?
- ThJ 14y agoWindow functions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function MDCT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_discrete_cosine_transform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_discrete_cosine_transf...
- pwthornton 14y agoThis technology could be used to cut down on files sizes, to raise video quality and to up resolution. A few thoughts: 1. 1080p streaming video from Apple, Netflix and others looks pretty good, but it suffers from more compression artifacts when compared to Blu-ray. It simply doesn't look as good. With a more efficient compression technology, streaming video could have similar file sizes to today's H.264 video but look more like Blu-ray. 2. I already own a laptop that does above 1080p video. When Apple release a Retina iMac or Thunderbolt display it will be around 5k. Other manufactures will be there too. 4k or so TVs and projectors are on their way. Streaming technology makes a lot more sense than a new physical format for higher resolution video. In order to realistically deliver 4k video (or 5k video like The Hobbit is being shot in) over IP, we would need better compression than H.264 3. Files sizes could be cut down, allowing people to consume more video without going over their caps. This would also allow mobile devices to store more high quality video content for on the go. The best case scenario would be that we get a combo of all three. 4k-5k video content is still a bit way for home use, but when it does come. H.265 sounds like the way to go. In the next few years, this technology could be used to cut down on file sizes some, while also upping the quality of video. This is what we saw with Apple's 1080p video which uses high profile H.264 video, whereas Apple's 720p video is main profile H.264. Yes, the 1080p videos are bigger, but not by much.
- jmaygarden 14y agoMaybe it's just me, but I don't need more than 1080p resolution for watching a video. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I think you need to be within 5 feet of a typical 42" screen to notice an improvement of 4k over 1080p. That's bit close for my taste! Now if you have some kind of enormous video setup that would benefit, then more power to you. EDIT: I found an article on the subject: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/
- bradwestness 14y agoYeah, I understand why movie theaters are interested in 5k, but I don't think most people will be able to see the difference on home televisions. Not that that will stop them from making them, but it'll be interesting to see what happens after 4k/5k when the limit of how much resolution the human eye can perceive has been surpassed.
- shmerl 14y agoThey surely plan to lock the industry into their new closed codec for another long time, since patents on H.264 will eventually expire. Will anyone come out with improved open codecs to counter that for the sake of open Web?
- rwmj 14y agoPossibly new codecs won't be needed. After all storage is increasing exponentially, and even bandwidth is going up slowly. For most users it doesn't matter if a movie fits in 600 MB or 300 MB.
- tomp 14y agoPeople will get along with H.264 just fine. If the industry (ISPs, mobile operators, Youtube, Netflix, ...) want us to use H.265 (they will gain the most from it), they will make it free.
- shmerl 14y agoThey don't want you to get along with H.264 just fine when H.264 patents will expire. That's why they are pushing for renewed codec. And the only way such thing can become free, is if someone would buy all patents on it (like Google did for VP8 with On2), and release the codec as free. But unlike the story with On2, with so many parties involved in MPEG-LA it's simply impossible. It's their perpetual cash cow, and they want to keep it that way, while it goes against the interests of the open Web.
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- peterwwillis 14y agoSweet! Half the bandwidth, double the copyright infringement. I still remember the days when downloading movies was only practical because someone had compressed them down to two 150-megabyte videos. When I got my first 'high quality' 580-megabyte copy of The Matrix, I was thrilled. Encoding used to be an art form. Now people just use whatever codec they want with default settings to get that 50GB Blu-ray movie down to a couple gigabytes and call it a day.
- bradwestness 14y agoYeah, I'm mostly curious how this codec stacks up against WebM/VP8 or whatever other free codecs are out there. It'd be nice to see something take off that's less encumbered by licensing issues.
- protomyth 14y agoAt this point, you are talking hardware acceleration is a must because of mobile (and it seems encoding on this one). Chip makers are fairly experienced with licensing, and a bit scarred of the unknown. MPEG-LA is a known.
- 0x09 14y agoEvery generational codec announcement from MPEG manages to attain "50% improvement", so it really remains to be seen. It certainly is a more advanced codec than H.264, which itself is already rather better than VP8 in its present form. Regarding the other thing, MPEG is running two tracks for a royalty-free spec based on existing patent-free tech and on grants from H.264 patent holders (respectively) which they say they will decide on sometime this year. An option like that from MPEG might not take off but can't hurt.
- josephlord 14y agoI think that you probably get 50% at the generation introduction and another 50% over 10 years as the encoders are improved (and more hardware is thrown at the problem). Double track on licensing makes some sense for a profile that can be served or provided free but I expect the efficiency benefits would mean that for commercial uses you would pay. That would mean that most hardware will support both so really I think most decodes will support both. Maybe people will use the non free for mobile.
- colinshark 14y agoI'm pretty libertarian, but for things like standards and formats, I really think the government should be stepping in and taking control. Standards, formats, and basic internet access are the new "roads" of the modern world. Commerce can flourish when we aren't fighting over them. Even for something R&D heavy like video codecs. How much money are we dumping into the NSA right now? Use some of that.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoWhich government institution should decide on the video codec for everyone to use? How would they know when it's time to switch? I cannot see that working any better than MPEG and MPEG-LA.
- Ralith 14y agoIf it worked about the same but the results were public domain, I'd call that a pretty big win.
- colinshark 14y agoThat institution probably does not exist. The Federal and State governments are still trying to figure out what an Internet is. This isn't even on their radar. For codecs, the government would not even need to regulate. As long as the offerings are good, the industry would be compelled to adopt them because of the lack of licensing costs and for the long term stability. Continuous R&D would still be necessary.
- bzbarsky 14y agoWell, for cryptographic hashes the relevant institution in the US is NIST and they switch at a point when there start to be worries about the previous hash being subject to successful attacks sometime in the future. There's no reason in principle that the same approach, again with NIST as the relevant institurion, could not be used for video codecs. It would be better than the MPEG-LA because the patent situation could be made much simpler (e.g. automatic patent licenses would be granted to all implementors of the standard).
- gmartres 14y agoI participate in the GSoC and my project is an HEVC decoder for libav: https://github.com/smarter/libav/tree/hevc https://github.com/smarter/libav/tree/hevc (the decoder is contained in the libavcodec/hevc* files). It currently only decodes I-frames and doesn't include the in-loop filters. Reference encoder: http://hevc.kw.bbc.co.uk/trac http://hevc.kw.bbc.co.uk/trac Samples: ftp://ftp.kw.bbc.co.uk/hevc/hm-8.0-anchors/bitstreams/ Latest draft of the spec: http://phenix.it-sudparis.eu/jct/doc_end_user/current_document.php?id=6465 http://phenix.it-sudparis.eu/jct/doc_end_user/current_docume...
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- mark-r 14y agoHalf the bandwidth with no quality loss is a pretty bold claim. Bold enough to be unbelievable - it's not like the existing codecs are doing a horrible job. Data rates are easily measurable, so I'd guess that "no quality loss" is an exaggeration. Anybody have any data on this?
- zapt02 14y agoNo "visible" quality loss. We know what that means.