News - High Efficiency Video Coding standard H.265 is approved

[HEXUS]

Provides high quality video on low-bandwidth connections and could be used for 4K.

Read more.

[cjs150]

Looks promising.

Maybe Lovefilm can adopt it soon, as quality is poor even on my 20 meg broad band

[Biscuit]

Whats not to like? 1/2 the bandwidth probably means 2ce the processing power required

[kalniel]

Whats not to like? 1/2 the bandwidth probably means 2ce the processing power required

Sometimes. Though sometimes smarter happens as well. In this case processing power has more than doubled since .264 while average internet bandwidth probably hasn't, so it's a move in the right direction and net gain.

[Biscuit]

Oh yeah im not denying its a move int he right direction, i just think its worth noting that there is a downside.

[Kushan]

I think that TechCrunch article is misleading. It's very vague when it says "4K-like streams at about the same file size as today’s 1080p videos". 4K-like? So not 4K, but higher than 1080p. "About the same file size"? About? So not quite the same, probably a bit higher? Combine the two and you don't really have a straight answer.

4K has 4x the pixels as 1080p, so it reasonably requires about 4x the bandwidth (or file-size) as 1080p. If HEVC is able to produce the same quality at half of the bandwidth, then really a 4K stream in HEVC will still use twice the bandwidth of a 1080p stream at h.264.

[Ross1]

You might have 4x the pixels, but that doesnt mean you will need 4x the bandwidth. Depends on what you are shooting to be honest. Grain and noise are the bits that wont compress well, so a grainy film might well near 4x the bandwidth, while stuff shot on digital 4k cameras will have a certain amount of extra detail over 1080p, but probably nowhere near enough to get close to using 4x the bandwidth.

Of course, in practise most legal streaming and download services stupidly give all movies and tv more or less the same bandwidth, meaning overkill on animation and bad loss of fine details on film.

[cptwhite_uk]

While I don't question your logic Kushan, I think there's more to it than that. The potential for data compression I suspect is higher on higher definition output, thus you might get double to resolution at equivalent quality for 1.5 times the file size...if that makes sense?

[Kushan]

Absolutely, I didn't mean to make it sound as clear cut as "4x the pixels = 4x the file size", however it does state in the article that 4K (HVEC) will take up the same file sizes as 1080p (h.264) files to today which is what I suspect is way off. I would expect, as you've mentioned, there to be a fairly significant file size increase - perhaps not 2x, but a good 1.5 bigger.

[shaithis]

4K has 4x the pixels as 1080p, so it reasonably requires about 4x the bandwidth (or file-size) as 1080p. If HEVC is able to produce the same quality at half of the bandwidth, then really a 4K stream in HEVC will still use twice the bandwidth of a 1080p stream at h.264.

As data size increases, compressions routines normally get more efficient.

Now, when can I get my hands on this to re-compress my movie collection?!?!??!?

[miniyazz]

Be nice if YouTube implements this pronto. 480p is currently the best quality I can stream reliably, and even then it occasionally stops to buffer

[Biscuit]

The only way websites can start using it immediately is if they have the videos stored and accessible in both .264 and .265, otherwise they will risk a lot of angry users who cant play the video on their current hardware. Even if software decoders come out, i cant see people with tablets, low end CPUs, smart TVs and other devices that rely on hardware decoding either from dedicated chips or their GPUs being able to handle it.

Added to this, transcoding the ENTIRE of youtube into .265 is a hell of a job. Lossy to lossy is always a nasty procedure aswell, some form of artifacts are bound to be introduced.

Everyone is getting far too excited about this i think, .264 is so widely used at the moment i think it will take quite some time for .265 to gain traction.

[davidcrofter]

Be interesting to see what existing hardware can handle this new encoding format because I am guessing it won't just me a smooth transfer over to H.265 - would be interesting if Freeview HD adopted this because it could mean a whole bunch of new HD channels either over the air or via the net and could also mean higher bitrates on SD channels.

[badass]

As data size increases, compressions routines normally get more efficient.

Now, when can I get my hands on this to re-compress my movie collection?!?!??!?

Remember, every time you transcode using a lossy codec as output, you lose quality. Maybe not much but you do definitely lose quality.

[badass]

Also I hope my Humax Foxsat HDR FreeSat+

Not a snowflakes chance in hell. The h264 in the Foxsat HDR is done in hardware. It will need different hardware to do h265.

[Noli]

Not a snowflakes chance in hell. The h264 in the Foxsat HDR is done in hardware. It will need different hardware to do h265.

My folks have this box too but I agree that it's a pipe dream. Even if you had a general purpose processor in there, I bet it's only just powerful enough to do 1080p h264. The lowest common denominator for companies is to spend only what they need to get the job done. Which makes sense - anything higher is lost profits/uncompetitive pricing.