Talks about 4K codecs, HEVC / h.265, AV1 and HDR mastering

Two months ago a yearly conference about video codecs and video technology took place, it was called Demuxed. They talked about AV1, one of the new video codecs that will compress video better. The other big new codec is HEVC(or h.256).

HEVC aka h.265, the sequel to h.264

When: Now-ish.

Software decode support: Windows 10, macOS High Sierra, iOS 11, Android 5.0.

Hardware decode support: Intel Kaby Lake and later, Nvidia GTX 900 series and later, AMD R9 fury and later, iOS devices with A9 chip and later. Many newer TVs will support it if you put a file on a USB stick.

The Playstation 4 does not seem to support HEVC files. The Xbox One has support for HEVC files. The Nvidia X1 Tegra hardware which the Nintendo Switch uses has hardware support but Nintendo does not seem to have released any software for it.

What: 40% less bandwidth compared to the current standard h.264.

Who: Apple, Samsung, Siemens, Dolby, Sharp, Microsoft, HP and many more.

AV1 aka the sequel to VP9

When: Finalized spec at the end of 2017. Official final software decode support in early 2018. Hardware decode support in "mid-to-late 2019" according to this streaming media article.

What: Currently 25% less bandwidth compared to HEVC(not h.264). Their target is 35% less bandwidth than HEVC.

Who: Google, Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, Cisco are some of the largest actors.

Netflix comparison of video codecs

Netflix talk about their comparison tests of h.264, HEVC(h.265) and VP9. Netflix talk starts at 1:00:43.

Benchmarks starts at 1:15:16. Human perception benchmark starts at 1:17:32.

AV1 Update

22:00 for the benchmarks.

Apple talks about HEVC for a minute during their 2017 WWDC Keynote

Starts at 29:04.

HEVC Patent pools

Three patent pools:

MPEG LA

HEVC Advance

Velos media

Technicolor left HEVC Advance and licenses directly.

A talk about the different HDR standards and whats different about them. How complex they are to encode and whether they are suitable for live streaming or not. I didn't know that there were two flavors of Dolby Vision.

There were also some talks from Twitch and Youtube which were interesting to watch.

Streaming video in 4K makes more sense if it uses 60% less bandwidth.

With net neutrality ending and bandwidth caps on the rise I hope netflix implements this shit ASAP.

@oursin_360 said:

I believe Netflix is already using h.265 when streaming in 4K. They're also using VP9 to encode downloaded files for offline use.

Any talk of new codec standards just gets me thinking back to my heyday with anime fansubs and just how far we've come in encode quality and efficiency since the alpha days of xvid.

What I personally wish streaming companies would use the increased efficiency to do is push quality upwards at the same bitrates. However, they are almost certain to do the opposite, and try to hold quality constant and lower bandwidth (and thus costs to them) by slashing bitrates. If they really want to kill physical media, they're going to have to match its fidelity, at least perceptually.

@oursin_360: net nuetrality sure stopped those caps boy when it goes away I bet suddenly we will all have caps.

No wait, nuetrality did nothing to stop caps or make netflix not buffer like crazy/play at the lowest possible quality on a unsaturated gigabit line.

Playful jesting about how little government intervention did to help, it would be real nice to see such a big increase in effeciency because it's clear that our rampant consumption of media is straining our infrastructure in the states.

That said, this all happens because of increased computing power to decompress so it'll rely on new features and performance expectations to work. Without shiny new hardware you'll need shiny new software and beefy hardware.