HEVC Bit Rate Ladder

[x265_Project]

Jan Ozer published an interesting article today, prompted by a conversation we had at Streaming Media East. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Apple-Got-It-Wrong-Encoding-Specs-for-HEVC-in-HLS--121878.aspx

[iwod]

Do Apple have their own HEVC encoder? Would it be any different to x265 in the bitrate ladder scenario.

I know in theory those comment on bitrate ladder sound perfectly reasonable, but just wondering if Apple has something else in their mind. Also the bitrate saving and recommendation seems very conservative to me.

[benwaggoner]

In reference to the original article, one reason to have some low resolution streams is for when content is playing back in a small window. Even with a hardware decoder, there is some battery hit from memory bandwidth and such from higher resolutions.

Of course, if a given bitrate looks good at a higher resolution, and a lower resolution is desired, having that be at a lower bitrate that looks appropriate at that resolution would be appropriate.