New video format will replace H.264, to be called H.265

[Dave Haynie]

Well, it’s a new option… it may be awhile before it replaced H.264, just as MPEG-2 is still in use.

I’m sure they’re thinking “4K” with this. The coding efficiency is supposed to be 40-75% better than H.264 (somewhat dependent on how you measure relative quality, by PSNR or by subjective human judgement), which means that 4K on standard Blu-ray is possible. Then again, 4K would fit just dandy with the existing CODECs on the BDXL format, which already exists. As they say, 4K at 20-30Mb/s, which is certainly in keeping with current Blu-ray rates. Or Red’s RedRay project, which is claiming 4K at 20Mb/s.

The standard includes support for both kinds of 4K: 3840×2160 and
4096×2160, at up to 120p, as well as the two corresponding 8K versions, also at up to 120p. What it doesn’t include: no interlace support.

Of course, what this means for us is another round of encoding and playback pain on PCs. Chances are, AMD and nVidia will work H.265 decoding into their GPU accelerators, since these are all software programmable. I didn’t find an estimate of the additional coding or decoding complexity over H.264. But some things, like the motion estimation space, are dramatically larger. Add that to 4K resolutions, and you’re definitely talking an exponential increase.

Looks like Intel gets to sell us faster CPUs for another ten years 🙁

-Dave

[Jane Kong]

This H.265 CODEC has already become the mainstream , But still hope the codec will natively support by soem NLEs.

[Sonic 67]

Jury is not out on that yet:

https://blog.euclidiq.com/video-compression-blog/the-video-codec-fight-h.265-vs.-vp9

[Dave Haynie]

[Jane Kong] “This H.265 CODEC has already become the mainstream , But still hope the codec will natively support by soem NLEs.”

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” -Inigo Montoya

H.265/HEVC may be the heir apparent for the next mainsteam CODEC, but it’s hardly the mainsteam just yet. Google launched the main competitor, VP9, but hasn’t had the industry support and connections of the MPEG people, so it’s pretty clearly going to become mainstream. But it’s not there yet.

It’s not yet well supported in most NLEs. Only a very few video cameras of any kind are using it yet (Samsung NX1). Netflix is using it for 4K streaming only (10-16Mb/s for a 4K stream), but only to Netflix-certified 4K televisions. YouTube is not (they’re using the rival VP9, which Google developed). Sony’s first 4K player did not support it, their new one does. Red’s doesn’t. DirecTV is supporting it, but only for 4K, and only on Samsung 4K TVs right now. The latest iOS and Android support it, but only on sufficiently capable hardware (Android 4.4 supports VP9).

At best, expect HEVC to be mainstream once 4K is mainstream.

-Dave