New video-compression (HEVC) twice as efficient as current standards.

[Seraphic-]

Don't think this has been posted, but a The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has met to issue a draft international standard of a new video-compression format called High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) that is twice as efficient as current H.264/AVC standards.

Links Below:

http://www.ericsson.com/news/120814_mpeg_244159018_c

http://stevencrowley.com/2012/08/14/new-video-compression-standard-doubles-efficiency/

[burfadel]

Won't be out for a while. One of the issues is that HEVC will require much more processing power than H.264 to achieve the stated benefit. H264 will be around for a while yet!

That said, it's always good to know something new is around the corner, and this will come in very handy for future high definition standards beyond 1920x1080.

[Blue_MiSfit]

The devil is in the implementation. Even if the standard is formally completed in the next year or so, I'd be quite surprised if we see really good encoders and wide support within 3-5 years. The industry invested heavily in MPEG-2 in the mid-late 90s, mainly to support digital transmission in SD. They again invested heavily into H.264 in the mid '00s, mainly to support big deployments of HD. That being said, there's still TONS of MPEG-2 around.

I'd say mid to late '10s would be a reasonable time to expect mature HEVC based standards (in the sense of ATSC / DVB-S2 scope standards) to become reasonably commonplace. The question is, what will drive HEVC adoption? UHDTV doesn't seem like it will catch on any time soon, 3D is handled reasonably well by H.264, and current systems are "good enough" for most purposes. Unless broadcasters have a strong desire to reduce bitrates to increase channel counts, I have a hard time seeing a big push towards a new standard - especially considering the massive infrastructure built around MPEG-2 and H.264.

Oh yeah, and of course HEVC is massively more computationally expensive.

Derek

[iwod]

I think we discuss it partially @ http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=165596&page=2

Although it is good we have a separate thread for it.

Some news site state a total of 500 patents designed for HEVC. I always wondered how much more expensive it is to buy out all the HEVC patents then 160 million for vp8.

Someone state HEVC is not H.265, while Wiki refers to both. Which is correct?

I was reading CABAC for HEVC is actually computationally less expensive then H.264 CABAC. What could theoretically means main profile to be better suited for mobile usage? Although i am not sure if the efficiency is worth the implementation effort on both hardware and software. As most of today Mobile H.264 usage are still stuck at wither Baseline ( o.O ) or Mainline profile.

Then we need x264 devs or some other teams to develop a decent encoder for it. Since x264 codebase could be adopted for x263 and xvp8 i wonder if xhevc is theoretically possible.

[nm]

The question is, what will drive HEVC adoption? UHDTV doesn't seem like it will catch on any time soon, 3D is handled reasonably well by H.264, and current systems are "good enough" for most purposes. Unless broadcasters have a strong desire to reduce bitrates to increase channel counts, I have a hard time seeing a big push towards a new standard - especially considering the massive infrastructure built around MPEG-2 and H.264.

I think IPTV and other internet broadcasting needs might drive it forward. That's a paradigm shift happening right now in many countries.

[vivan]

As most of today Mobile H.264 usage are still stuck at wither Baseline ( o.O ) or Mainline profile.Everything now supports at least 720p High@L3.1. Except tegra 2.

[Audionut]

By the time HEVC becomes usable, computational requirements won't matter because processing power will be so much more in the future.

Exactly the same as when H.264 standards were introduced. Everyone complained it was so slow and required so much extra processing power (over MPEG-2, MPEG-4). And yet 8 years later we all thoroughly enjoy x264.
It honestly wasn't that long ago that all but a few extreme processors could process HD material in real-time with H.264.

[Blue_MiSfit]

@Audionut: This is definitely true when we're talking about software encoding and decoding on things as beefy as desktop PCs and servers. Embedded hardware is another story altogether. There's a whole lot of MPEG-2 and H.264 set top boxes / IRDs out there!

I'm not doubting that we'll ultimately all be using HEVC. It's just going to take a long time.

[Audionut]

There's a whole lot of MPEG-2 and H.264 set top boxes / IRDs out there!

And it was exactly the same when H.264 was finalized.

It was all MPEG-2/MPEG4-part 2. And everyone complained because it required to much processing power, and there were no devices that support it for years.

I'm not doubting that we'll ultimately all be using HEVC. It's just going to take a long time.

Which is exactly what I have been saying. :confused:

[burfadel]

Someone state HEVC is not H.265, while Wiki refers to both. Which is correct?

HEVC is the MPEG group design and designation, h.265 is the ITU-T designation. It is being worked on by both consortiums, and as such both names are correct.

It is no different to h.264 and AVC (Mpeg 4 AVC/MPEG-4 Part 10), just h.264 is the 'winning' name. I guess it sounds better than saying Mpeg-4 Part 10! This was also designed by the same consortium, with h.264 being the ITU-T name and the MPEG 4 Part 10/AVC name the MPEG name.

[ckmox]

i actually posted this on the news area but the post is not yet approve blehh

but here is what i posted for more references
H265 will half the video filesizes of H264 videos or H265 offers higher resolution at same filesizes as todays H264 videos and we might see H265 as early as 2013

source:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/mpeg-drafts-twice-as-efficient-h-265-video-standard/
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-mpeg-codec-halves-bit.html

[Ghitulescu]

Some news site state a total of 500 patents designed for HEVC. I always wondered how much more expensive it is to buy out all the HEVC patents then 160 million for vp8.
These 500 patents belong to a pool: several "founders" agree on a new standard, and put together their patents, while the benefits are split according to the initial agreement. Newcomers are issued generic licence fees for all the technologies they need (and covered by those patents). One cannot buy all of them, as this will drive all the founders away from their technology, but supposing one does, he has to invest billions and billions $.
Someone state HEVC is not H.265, while Wiki refers to both. Which is correct?
The correct version is what MPEG says.

[Guest]

i actually posted this on the news area but the post is not yet approve blehh Discussion is not allowed in News threads, so IMHO that was not a good choice.

[kurt]

By the time HEVC becomes usable, computational requirements won't matter because processing power will be so much more in the future.

Exactly the same as when H.264 standards were introduced. Everyone complained it was so slow and required so much extra processing power (over MPEG-2, MPEG-4). And yet 8 years later we all thoroughly enjoy x264.
It honestly wasn't that long ago that all but a few extreme processors could process HD material in real-time with H.264.
I checked wikipedia on H264 and the final draft of version 1 was completed in May 2003, the high profile version came out 2 years later. On Feb. 2008 I bought my first (popcorn hour) device, which supports H264. Hopefully this time it won't take so long :p

[burfadel]

The correct version is what MPEG says.

Not quite true, but HEVC and h.265 are both correct. Different consortiums working together, different name for the same thing like I said earlier. Like with AVC and h.264, and people calling it h.264, the ITU-T designation h.265 is probably the name that will be more common.

[mp3dom]

BTW, if someone is interested I've just received a newsletter from Rovi/MainConcept/Whatever, that at IBC they will shows HEVC demos and probably some more infos.

[Ghitulescu]

Not quite true, but HEVC and h.265 are both correct. Different consortiums working together, different name for the same thing like I said earlier. Like with AVC and h.264, and people calling it h.264, the ITU-T designation h.265 is probably the name that will be more common.

That's your opinion. We'll know for sure only when ITU will register H.265. Until then only speculations. Like with MPEG-3 some 10 years ago.

[hajj_3]

I suspect HEVC will be implemented far quicker than h.264 was because web streaming and paid movies/tv shows is a huge business now so there are massive cost savings for this. Also Mobile would be greatly improved with half the bandwidth being needed for video and would harm your data allowance a lot less.

I'd expect some hardware decoding to be on all desktop/laptop/netbook/tablet/phones within 2yrs of the standard being finalized. As for good quality software encoders probably 3yrs till some decent ones start to crop up.

I'm more interested in Daala - the free open source video codec that xiph/mozilla are creating which will be slightly better than HEVC yet will be patent-free.

[poisondeathray]

I'm more interested in Daala - the free open source video codec that xiph/mozilla are creating which will be slightly better than HEVC yet will be patent-free.


Thanks I never heard of "Daala"
http://wiki.xiph.org/Daala

But where did you get this "slightly better" from ? Some tests or opinion or "someone said" ....

[Atak_Snajpera]

if opus can be slightly better than aac so i see no reason that people who are behind x264 could not create free alternative to h.265. with proper finacial support from google they may create something alot better than crappy vp8 codec.

[JEEB]

But where did you get this "slightly better" from ? Some tests or opinion or "someone said" ....
The format is very far from being set (they're still open to ideas and algorithms to make stuff work better), so benchmarking at this point would be pretty much useless.

Getting it to be better than HEVC is a goal of theirs (http://xiph.org/daala/), although we'll see when the first version of it actually gets finished :)
The goal of the project is to provide a free to implement, use and distribute digital media format and reference implementation with technical performance superior to h.265.

Anyways, the "next generation formats" I see right now in development are:

HEVC (developed in the usual way that we know from the earlier standards)
vp8-dev/vp8-next (yes, this is why Google really doesn't care about VP8 that much, if at all; developed at Google behind closed doors IIRC)
Daala (openly developed by Xiph so that anyone can join the effort)

[easyfab]

vp8-dev/vp8-next (yes, this is why Google really doesn't care about VP8 that much, if at all; developed at Google behind closed doors IIRC)

[/LIST]

http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/experimental

Is that the new vp8-dev or the "old" vp8 ?

[SassBot]

if opus can be slightly better than aac so i see no reason that people who are behind x264 could not create free alternative to h.265. with proper finacial support from google they may create something alot better than crappy vp8 codec.

One of the major issues isn't really in coming up with better ideas, though that is definitely not easy, it's making sure to avoid the patent minefield. You can believe that anything like Daala will have the hounds at places like MPEG-LA chomping at the bit to find people with relevant patents.

[Atak_Snajpera]

oh software patents ... who does not love them ;)

[iwod]

Hopefully there is an Opus for Video as well. But i think Video Patents are much worst then audio. Having said that no one so far has complained and sue Google for Vp8 yet which is strange.

There was that Next Gen Real Video which is now dead in the water.

It seems DS is involved in Daala as well ( What an Ugly Name ), xvp8, x265, xdaala? Which comes first.?

[hajj_3]

it is difficult to know which will come first as google always keeps quiet regarding their development. Daala is still in the design stages at the moment, who knows how long until a fully fuctional version is ready. HEVC is due to be ratified in January. At which point hardware vendors can start developing dedicated ASIC for hardware decoding of HEVC. It will be a while for a half decent encoder is released though. Daala will surely be first out with a good encoder before HEVC. Google is an unknown. I wish they would just help out with Daala, then it would be even better and released even quicker and less likely to encounter patent lawsuits.

[JEEB]

It seems DS is involved in Daala as well ( What an Ugly Name ), xvp8, x265, xdaala? Which comes first.?
Xvp8 is being sponsored by pretty much the only side that still cares about it -- Mozilla. It can IIRC already do intra encoding and I'd bet that because it has sponsoring it'll also be the fastest out :P

That said, it has nothing to do with next-gen formats.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm misreading your post, but AFAIK D_S is not involved with the x265 project that is on Google Code. The person developing that is a guy who used to contribute a couple of commits to x264 back in 2004.

[Audionut]

Daala wiki lists Jason and Loren as having been involved in discussions about it.

http://wiki.xiph.org/Daala

Take from that what you will.

[JEEB]

Daala wiki lists Jason and Loren as having been involved in discussions about it.

http://wiki.xiph.org/Daala

Take from that what you will.
Yes, they have been involved in the design discussions around the Daala project, as the development process of the format is completely open.

[IgorC]

Hopefully there is an Opus for Video as well. But i think Video Patents are much worst then audio. Having said that no one so far has complained and sue Google for Vp8 yet which is strange.

It's worth to mention that the most critics and talk about possible patent issues for VP8 were coming from .... people of H.264 industry as well as some developers.

Make your own conclusion.

Until now MPEG-LA doesn't present any lawsuit against Google. And apparently it won't happen any time soon.

I'm not an open-source-only follower and I really like the standards like H.264, HEVC, AAC as well as open source formats as Vorbis, Opus, VP8, Daala.

But when I've started to prepare for public test of Opus ( an open source audio format) with Hydrogen Audio community I've received a ridiculuos critics. It's not hard to imagine that people behind it were involved to development and sells of H.264 and AAC encoders (as it was pretty obvious at that point Opus was quite better than AAC/HE-AAC).


P.S.
The same way as MPEG-LA can accuse organizations which develop open source formats the last ones can accuse MPEG-LA of patent troll.
It's not that easy.

[Ghitulescu]

... the last ones can accuse MPEG-LA of patent troll.
That's not punishable under any jurisdiction ;).

[IgorC]

It's an antitrust law.

[Ghitulescu]

Then it's infringed for at least 20 years, take for instance the GSM case, of any of the MPEG patent pools ....

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hmmm....

I thought the scope of this topic was to discuss the merits of HEVC (aka: H.265) - Not patents, lawsuits and who stole what from whom!

[iwod]

Yeah, sorry it got side tracked. Any news on x265? Or will it only start once the spec is finalised.

[JEEB]

No-one has yet come up with developing a HEVC encoder based on x264. The x265 project (http://code.google.com/p/x265/) started by a guy who has a couple of commits in x264 from 2004 (http://git.videolan.org/gitweb.cgi?p=x264.git;a=search;h=HEAD;s=Min+Chen;st=author) is seemingly a clear from-zero project, not related to x264.

Another HEVC encoder project I've noticed was started by a person I know, and he is seemingly working on it every now and then. Nothing worth calling home about (yet).

As for decoders, smarter from libav has gotten intra frames to work (https://github.com/smarter/libav/commits/hevc) it seems.

tl;dr
If you expect a HEVC encoder on the base of x264, there is no such thing around or even in the design phase.

[wreuven]

I believe posters are mistaken who think that HEVC will take a long time to become mainstream. It won't be driven by broadcasters. It will be driven by Apple and IP video delivery costs/quality. Apple will introduce it into some next generation devices in the next few years and the cost/quality benefits will do the rest. 4K video over IP anyone?

[Atak_Snajpera]

i doubt that average user will dump current fullhd display for expensive fancy 4k. the same rule applies to fullhd camcorders.
besides insead of 4k i would like to see 1080p at the same bitrate on youtube.

[Keiyakusha]

I believe posters are mistaken who think that HEVC will take a long time to become mainstream. It won't be driven by broadcasters. It will be driven by Apple and IP video delivery costs/quality. Apple will introduce it into some next generation devices in the next few years and the cost/quality benefits will do the rest. 4K video over IP anyone?

I wouldn't be so sure because HEVC's main advantage is higher compression, but this comes from increased complexity and even decoding will require more CPU power. Since current hardware hardly use all neat h264 features due to performance reasons, It doesn't looks like something even more complex is what they really interested in. (Edit: unless Apple wants the video to drain batteries in their i-stuff faster). Most likely it will face the fate of mpeg4-asp until blurays will be switched by some new purple-rays or whatever-rays and yet another standard will be developed.

[benwaggoner]

vp8-dev/vp8-next (yes, this is why Google really doesn't care about VP8 that much, if at all; developed at Google behind closed doors IIRC)
Daala (openly developed by Xiph so that anyone can join the effort)
[/LIST]

Actually, they had a summit about it in July, and have now posted all the documents from it.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1590046#post1590046

[ckmox]

Anyways, the "next generation formats" I see right now in development are:

HEVC (developed in the usual way that we know from the earlier standards)
vp8-dev/vp8-next (yes, this is why Google really doesn't care about VP8 that much, if at all; developed at Google behind closed doors IIRC)
Daala (openly developed by Xiph so that anyone can join the effort)


just a little off-topic concern... can anyone make a dedicated thread for Daala too?

we already have dedicated threads for VP8-Next (NGOV) and H265 (HEVC)

[Parabola]

I wouldn't be so sure because HEVC's main advantage is higher compression, but this comes from increased complexity and even decoding will require more CPU power. Since current hardware hardly use all neat h264 features due to performance reasons, It doesn't looks like something even more complex is what they really interested in. (Edit: unless Apple wants the video to drain batteries in their i-stuff faster). Most likely it will face the fate of mpeg4-asp until blurays will be switched by some new purple-rays or whatever-rays and yet another standard will be developed.

HEVC will be bigger than MPEG-4 pt. 2 ASP. Decoder complexity is not as bad as you might expect and HEVC is already heading straight for silicon. And, you'll save battery in running less bits over the new DSP-heavy radio protocols.

What could kill it is uncertainty over licensing, or expensive or badly thought out license terms - are you listening, MPEG-LA? Or uncoordinated, multiple licensors (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376006/Patent-snafus-could-delay-new-video-codec). IETF is making interesting noises, but the timing of their initiative is interesting at a point where HEVC patent strategists have yet to reveal their position.

[JEEB]

OK, bumping the general HEVC thread as it seems like the libavcodec decoder project (https://github.com/smarter/libav) has gotten into somewhat more usable state :)

After months of getting my samples fail to decode because of the parser ending up in an eternal loop somewhere, it can finally decode my HM 10.0 encoded sample, and going through the per-frame md5 hashes given out by the decoder against the encoder's decoded frames' md5 hashes, it seems to be generally if not fully correct (I cannot be sure of full correctness as I haven't removed the other data that framemd5 outputs in addition to the actual hashes, so I haven't computer-checked them all to be completely exact yet).

That said, the sample was intra-only, as I never got to making other ones until it decoded fully and correctly. P and B frames have seen some development in the decoder, but I would still guess that things aren't exactly fully ready on that front yet (although I could be incorrect). Happy testing, and do remember that you will want to use HM 10, or newer, to encode (or any encoder of your own that you might have access to that confines to the current bit stream standard)!

[JEEB]

To all the experts of the JCT-VC,

I am very proud to announce that the editors have finalized the HEVC specification text and submitted it to ITU-T and ISO/IEC for final approval (Last Call in ITU-T and FDIS ballot in ISO/IEC).

The completion of HEVC is surely the most significant event in video coding in a decade. It has been an extremely active, constructive, and collaborative project, with more than 750 participants and more than 5500 contribution documents, and I believe the result is extraordinary.

On behalf of the editors and the management team of the project, I would like to thank all the contributors.

Best regards,

The editing team (Benjamin Bross, Woo-Jin Han, Jens-Rainer Ohm, Gary Sullivan, Ye-Kui Wang and Thomas Wiegand)
And thus we have come to this, seems like Draft 10 Version 34 is the version that was sent out to the FDIS ballot. If I recall correctly, an FDIS ballot should take two months, and if it passes (most probably it will), HEVC will finally officially be a real standard :)

Many people have been working on implementing this format for quite some time now, but I think at this point we can congratulate everyone related to the HEVC project, and thank them for their good work at finishing up the format.

[JEEB]

Ladies and gents, we have our first official spec. While I haven't been looking, it seems like ITU-T ratified the HEVC format as ITU-T H.265 (http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=11885) (04/2013) about a week ago.

As the ISO/IEC FDIS ballot takes two months, that will probably take until the latter half of May to finish :)

[Nil Einne]

if opus can be slightly better than aac so i see no reason that people who are behind x264 could not create free alternative to h.265. with proper finacial support from google they may create something alot better than crappy vp8 codec.

I know this was an old post but I keep seeing these comparisons and it seems to me they're poor comparisons. If I'm reading correctly, the Opus bitstream was frozen Jan 2012 and standardisation was completed sometime that year. I don't know about the bitstream but standardisation for HE-AAC was completed in in 2003 or 2004. LC-AAC was even earlier. In other words, we're talking about a 8 year or so gap. It shouldn't really be that surprising that they can finally beat. While HE-AAC codecs have been improving in that time, ultimately they're limited by the spec. And looking at Opus's own info http://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ it doesn't look like Opus is that revolutionary as some claim. It's better but not by that much. The bigger advantages are probably latency and working range.

In the case of H.265/HEVC vs Daala or VP9 we're talking about each one trying to be the best they can be within certain parameters developed based on current tech level (well VP9 seems a bit behind? and Daala perhaps even more, but that's not necessarily a good thing). So while I wish those projects well, I'm not convinced they're really going to achieve truly equivalent quality. In any case, I suspect the battle will be lost elsewhere namely in the lack of hardware, vendor and content provider support. (As I mentioned, it seems H265/HEVC is going to beat them in terms of being first which in this case considering the legacy and support it has behind it means it'll probably have won before VP9? or Daali really get off the ground.) Of course Daali and VP9? will hopefully end up being better than H264, but that's not a major victory and shouldn't be their goal.

BTW, don't get me wrong. I'd love to see an patent free codec win, it's just that I don't think it's going to happen from all that we've seen so far and all that I'm seeing now. (I would prefer Daali over VP9.)

I should mention I don't know much about Opus, I only learnt about it recently. I'm not dissing it, in fact I'd love for it to become the new defacto standard, the fact that it seems to handle a wide range of bitrates well seems particularly nice. Sadly I don't think this is going to happen. Despite the decent legacy behind Opus, I think the audio codec world is just a bit too dead. It may take over in some applications like realtime audio (including realtime video conferencing, VoIP etc) but in many areas, people aren't going to see a reason to move since the benefit is too small. Enthusiasts may move, those who aren't convinced they need lossless. But in most areas, people are happy with the size/quality tradeoff or just don't care. And there are other problems, e.g. in the multichannel world, we still have DTS and DD5.1 although I presume other codecs could achieve a better quality/size tradeoff. I've never looked in to it, but I've always presumed the reason these formats still dominate is because of the vagaries in streaming other formats to receivers (HDMI and LPCM should negate this but I'm not sure what level of support there is). And of course in the Bluray world, there are a bunch of stuff which likely add nothing but extra space used (which doesn't matter so much for Blurays, but still...). Which is another reason I forgot to mention for the prevalence of the other formats, marketing.

[mandarinka]

Daala might look interesting, but it is still in the conceptual stage (AFAIK they are still designing transform and intra prediction, inter prediction hasn't been on the programme yet), and the development isn't progressing exactly quickly.
In other words, if it will be finished, it is going to come few years from now (by that time, H.265 will likely have formed a reasonably mature environment).

Add to the problem that upon finishing of the specification (and upon review/standardization, should it be submitted to some standard body for that purpose), there will still be the task of writing and tuning a production specification of the encoder. And I think that most of us realise what a gigantic task it is to implement a high-quality video encoder.

[hajj_3]

daala will probably be axed, development is ridiculously slow, it would take years at this rate for a final version to be released. VP9 will probably be released this year, unfortunately the quality is vp9 is very poor at the moment, in many instances beaten by x264. I really hope google doesn't finalise it anytime soon, it needs to be as good or better than h.265 in order to succeed.

[sneaker_ger]

VP9 will probably be released this year, unfortunately the quality is vp9 is very poor at the moment, in many instances beaten by x264.

Not being beaten by x264 in every instance despite being in an early stage is a darn good performance, I'd say.

[xooyoozoo]

VP9 will probably be released this year, unfortunately the quality is vp9 is very poor at the moment, in many instances beaten by x264. I really hope google doesn't finalise it anytime soon, it needs to be as good or better than h.265 in order to succeed.

Using PSNR (well it's not like they developed for anything else) as a measurement, HEVC barely changed its quality per bit since early 2012. Since mid-late 2011, it might have increased bd-rate by roughly 5-10%.

My main point here is that Google will need more than the remainder of this year to catch up to HEVC. Even with open collaboration from a cornucopia of researchers and corporations, as well as free reign to uses as many patents as needed, progress on HEVC's quality wasn't exactly overwhelming. It seems like the majority of its performance was already determined by foundations laid previously, and I don't expect VP9 to buck that trend by gluing on a bunch of new features in a short amount of time.

In terms of subjective quality, the gap between HEVC and VP9 is still quite distinct. It's obvious enough that, recently, I haven't bothered to try to quantify it with metrics.