HEVC Next generation video format (to replace H264 )

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surfisup1000

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# 140724 18-Feb-2014 19:18

I just noticed that my media player (PotPlayer) now supports HEVC format which wil lbe the successor to H264. Probably I'm a bit slow, but this has not hit mainstream yet.

Thought I'd give it a test drive, you can download HEVC format files at

http://www.elecard.com/en/download/videos.html

A ten minute 1080p video takes around 150mb. This would equate to around 1.8gb for a 2 hour high def 1080p video. Pretty decent.

Checked the video quality and looks visually very good. Although, cannot do a side-to-side comparison but subjectively this codec looks really very good with much less bandwidth cost.

Bluray is obsolete, I'm happy.

networkn

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# 989974 18-Feb-2014 21:03

Is HEVC 1080P only? I really like the idea, I'd be very pleased if there was a 720P and it made it half the size it is now!

k1wi

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# 990035 18-Feb-2014 21:48

Yeah x265 (HEVC) has been around for a bit, a lot of the encoders are still in beta and pretty inefficient though.

Not just 1080p, all resolutions, just like avi and x264.

It's important for 4k video, but in exchange for the more efficient video it has a much heavier CPU/GPU load.

I'm looking forward to it.

networkn

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# 990037 18-Feb-2014 21:55

k1wi: Yeah x265 (HEVC) has been around for a bit, a lot of the encoders are still in beta and pretty inefficient though.

Not just 1080p, all resolutions, just like avi and x264.

It's important for 4k video, but in exchange for the more efficient video it has a much heavier CPU/GPU load.

I'm looking forward to it.

I had a bit of a look around, content encoded via this on usenet seems pretty slim though I found alpha house in 1080p with DD5.1 which was 381MB!!! Insane.

k1wi

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# 990043 18-Feb-2014 22:12

The video compression is about double for the same level of quality. In theory the file size could be anything, but the quality will be affected. The 5.1 audio is not an insignificant proportion of the file size.

TwoSeven

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# 990094 19-Feb-2014 07:54

I suspect the H.264 standard will be continued to be used but with a 4K revision added.

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networkn

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# 990203 19-Feb-2014 10:19

TwoSeven: I suspect the H.264 standard will be continued to be used but with a 4K revision added.

I really hope not, 50% compression is a excellent bandwidth saving.

k1wi

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# 990659 19-Feb-2014 17:58

TwoSeven: I suspect the H.264 standard will be continued to be used but with a 4K revision added.

H.264 will be continued to be used just as all previous codec (avi and MPEG2 for example) have continued to be used. in implementations where updates are infrequent in nature such as Freeview, there will be a staged progression to new codecs. 4k would certainly provide the impetuous for HVEC - bundle it in a 'upgrade to 4K ready Freeview' option. H.264 will allow more channels at an equal quality on a given mux which will be a huge incentive to broadcasters, but won't happen for a while, let alone in any quantity.

For areas like computers, which are more adaptable, HEVC will come faster, as it will run on the CPU (and NVidia's Maxwell GPU has partial support for it). Older computers will be able to fall back to h.264 or less.

x264 took a while to reach critical mass amongst 'The Scene', it was the 720p and 1080p standards that enabled it ('SD' was seriously splintered with XVID, x264, and to a degree 480p, standards). Maybe H265 will be quicker, but i suspect it's vector will be with 4k.