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Bert22306
From what I've read of H.265, it is an evolutionary development of H.264, just ...
Hyperdude
You don't have to gamble too much. Use a programmable SOC. Do your initial ...
Next-gen video codec hits milestone
Rick Merritt
2/8/2012 11:08 PM EST
SAN JOSE – The standards group hammering out the next generation of the MPEG media codec has forged a committee draft of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard in a regular meeting here this week. The spec also known informally as H.265 is expected to provide efficiency boosts in transmitting video for next generation systems and networks using it.
The committee draft is seen is an important but not a final milestone in the standard’s progress. The spec faces two more hurdles before it is cast in stone.
Attendees at the standards event here had mixed opinions about whether or not the standard was now stable enough to start design work. Some companies claim they are already starting chip designs for HEVC, others say they will wait about six months for the standard to progress to the next and more stable milestone, the draft international standard expected in July.
The group aims to ratify a final standard in January 2013.
When it was initially proposed, advocates said H.265 could provide efficiency boosts of 35-40 percent over today’s H.264 codecs. In this week’s meeting one speaker said the boosts could be as high as 67 percent.
HEVC is the follow on to H.264, also known as MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding. The new spec is being drafted by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding, a collaboration between the MPEG group and the ITU-T.
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centre
2/9/2012 7:51 AM EST
Is it HVEC or HEVC ?
... 35-40 percent over today’s H.265 ... isn't it H.264 ?
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junko.yoshida
2/9/2012 9:30 AM EST
sorry; these were typos. will fix!
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junko.yoshida
2/9/2012 9:33 AM EST
What are the technical challenges in making the new H.265 work well in a silicon?
Do we already have a software-based H.265 IP available today?
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the lavender fan
2/9/2012 3:32 PM EST
Please clarify what you mean by "efficiency".
H.265 encoder generates a bit-stream that's 67% smaller than that generated by H.264?
H.265 runs 67% faster than H.264?
H.265 saves silicon size by 67%?
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rick.merritt
2/9/2012 3:41 PM EST
Efficiency typically refers to a codec's ability to send the same data using less bandwidth or more data at a fixed bandwidth...and mileage varies greatly with a number of variables
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the lavender fan
2/9/2012 4:47 PM EST
Thanks for the clarification. I wonder what's the price for this efficiency boost, i.e. how much more complicated H.265 is.
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Orpheus_nl
2/9/2012 6:27 PM EST
You don't have to wait for HVEC / H.265 to stream efficiently with low bitrate and high video quality. 1080p HD is achievealbe at 1 Mbit/sec - see our samples http://www.bwin.nu The encoded videos are fully H.264 complaint.
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Happy Heyoka
2/9/2012 7:15 PM EST
Let us hope they have the lawyers and business folks working in parallel this time...
One of the problems with adopting AVC/H.264 initially was the crummy first revision licensing terms - the technology was clearly superior but, from a business perspective, impossible to adopt.
Please MPEG don't make the same mistake again.
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GeorgeHaber
2/9/2012 8:10 PM EST
Yes the complete Software model is available and i am certain soon you will have a few HW companies reducing the Algorithms and the SW in to FPGA or chips.
:D
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kinnar
2/10/2012 6:10 AM EST
Is H.264 and H.265 is completely different? The codec market is already flooded with the so many variants, it would be better if the MPEG and all the companies come up certain compatibility agreement then it would be possible to have long lasting hardware development, otherwise all the videos will remain being played majorly on the desktops.
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t.alex
2/10/2012 8:16 AM EST
This probably targets at streaming videos.
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Frank Eory
2/10/2012 12:54 PM EST
If these efficiency improvements are for real, could H.265 be the end of the line in video CODEC evolution? By the time H.265 is widely deployed, so too will LTE be widely deployed.
The large increase in wireless data rates combined with a huge reduction in video bit rate will greatly relieve the impact of video on network congestion -- video will be a lot more like any other data. At that point, will we ever need a more advanced CODEC?
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LarryM99
2/10/2012 1:28 PM EST
If the rest of the world stood still then we might get to that end point, but it doesn't. CES this year started showing 4K sets, and 3D is also popular. If we pull images fully into the 3rd dimension then we need essentially a solid modeling format. Whatever direction displays move CODECs will have to follow.
Larry M.
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hm
2/10/2012 9:17 PM EST
What is best image quality (resolution, frame rate and color depth) transmitted with H.265 and USB2.0?
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DrQuine
2/11/2012 12:33 PM EST
An interesting gamble for chip designers. How early can they commit to silicon to be first to market ... while still ensuring that they have all the necessary functionality to enable any revisions to the standard to be implemented as software updates.
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Hyperdude
2/12/2012 12:51 AM EST
You don't have to gamble too much. Use a programmable SOC. Do your initial implementation and then update as the standard matures. Anyway these standards have a subjective image quality to begin with. You need to tweak your implementation over time.
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Bert22306
2/12/2012 7:13 PM EST
From what I've read of H.265, it is an evolutionary development of H.264, just as H.264 was an evolutionary development of MPEG-2 compression (H.262).
Usually, the efficiency increase figures that get bandied about don't reflect the actual reduction in bit rate, for whatever reasons. Although in the case of H.264, it does work much better than H.262 at very low bit rates, such as less than 2 Mb/s. But when H.264 is used for HD quality TV, the bit rates are not half of what they are when H.262 is used, as the hype might have suggested. Instead, they are comparable.
One problem with codec improvements is that they invariably require more processing power, both is coding and in decoding. The decoding part can become problematic for existing hardware, when the decoding is done in software. Still, if 3D TV or UHDTV are to become reality, there's no other choice but to keep improving codecs.
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