Craig: x264 encoder implementation in Compressor?

[Craig Seeman]

[Walter Soyka] “Could you please you describe a bit about where in the industry HEVC is likely to be adopted first, or maybe point me to some good reading?”

Of course a lot of the articles are positive but I think that’s a good indicator of where the market will go.

https://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57498163-93/hevc-a-new-weapon-in-codec-wars-to-appear-in-september/

Qualcomm has been well into this for a year publicly.
https://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57387626-78/qualcomm-shows-horsepower-of-next-gen-h.265-video/

Once this gets into mobile phones and tablets (and I think it will fairly quickly) use is going to spread quickly. MainConcept already has an SDK ready.

https://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57501769-93/new-hevc-video-compression-wins-big-over-todays-standard/
It may be the thing that makes 4K TV practical. Of course in that case I’m not sure it will mean anything to the consumer, many of whom can barely discern HD. More likely cable providers will want to exploit lower bandwidth requirements but that’s going to take much longer given the hardware changes they may need.

It’s currently very slot to encode which either means a boon to companies providing enterprise class encoders. While the cost to encode may go up, the decrease in file size storage and lower bandwidth to deliver may make up for that. The mobile, not the TV market, will drive this decision making.

https://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/284-h-265-aka-hevc-the-next-generation-of-video-compression
BTW RedShark, based in the UK, is a new online publication that might be worth paying attention to.

The interesting thing is how fast some hardware manufacturers are moving on this before one even knows what the demand will be. Broadcaster Encoders already coming to market.
https://www.allegrodvt.com/broadcast/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89&Itemid=61

Ericsson is doing a lot work on research and implementation. While this is pretty simple it does give you an aesthetic overview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiufmjfhuP8

This is more technical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGifAEK7iQc

and this from MainConcept
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETIkEfJJfec

So what does this all allude to. I think a much bigger market push for adoption that H.264 saw. The practical for mobile is the most obvious.

Ironically HEVC uses CABAC entropy (as can H.264) which Apple still has not implemented in its H.264 encoding!

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[Walter Soyka]

Craig, this post is simply stunning. Well above and beyond. I regret that I have but one Like to give.

Many, many thanks for taking the time to put this together!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Craig Seeman]

Tangentially it’s interesting to ponder how Apple is going to handle all this.

[Markus Peek]

Is there a reason you aren’t using Handbrake instead? It’s free, faster, and higher quality than Compressor. It’s what I always use if I’m encoding on local drive.

H.264 is going to be around a long time. Even when H.265/HEVC hardware decoder chips are embedded into consumer devices, they will still decode H.264. Just like H.264 chips today still decode MPEG-2.

[Craig Seeman]

What if one wants to burn in timecode or add a watermark?
What if one has a batch encode to several different codecs?
That and other reasons are why people buy Telestream Episode or Squeeze with x264 support.

Handbreak is great at x264 encoding and it does allow access to some of the deeper parameters but it’s also missing features for diverse encoding needs.

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

please don’t forget to write a Feature Request to Apple!
Discussing here is nice but a FR could actually help.

I also hope Apple will license the open source H.265 HEVC
successor of x264; (it’s not named x265 – no relation to x264)

Best regards,
Bernhard

[Anmol Mishra]

Could someone please post an archive of the x264 component or dmg ? Only the source is archived at github and myCometG3 no longer hosts the file.

[Craig Seeman]

Possibly here
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24173/x264encoder

[Anmol Mishra]

Does not download and points to a dead link.

[Craig Seeman]

Maybe this?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/x264qtcodec.berlios/files/latest/download

You do know the reason it’s gone is that Apple EOLd Quicktime Frameworks development. It never progressed beyond 32 bit.

The current version of Compressor can closely match x264 when using High Profile CABAC encoding.
Otherwise you can always use Handbrake.