Next-Gen Video Encoding: x265 Tackles HEVC/H.265 104
An anonymous reader writes "Late last night, MulticoreWare released an early alpha build of the x265 library. x265 is intended to be the open source counterpart to the recently released HEVC/H.265 standard which was approved back in January, much in the same way that x264 is used for H.264 today. Tom's Hardware put x265 through a series of CPU benchmarks and then compared x265 to x264. While x265 is more taxing in terms of CPU utilization, it affords higher quality at any given bit rate, or the same quality at a lower bit rate than x264."
(Reader Dputiger writes points out a comparison at ExtremeTech, too.)
Re:This is great news! (Score:5, Insightful)
Storage isn't a problem, it's the cheapest part of the equation. Energy consumption is the biggest technical challenge due to the global domination of mobile devices and the current limitations in energy storage.
_transferring_ is still very much a issue though.
Re:This is great news! (Score:4, Insightful)
Storage isn't even the problem when it comes to file size, network bandwidth is. The generally poor quality of broadband and even cable ultimately relate to the size of the file. Network performance and bandwidth caps are the real choke point.
Streams get over compressed to the point that even an aggressively transcoded DVD beats the snot out of them in terms of quality. Forget about a raw BluRay stream.
Re:This is great news! (Score:4, Insightful)
Storage isn't a problem, it's the cheapest part of the equation. Energy consumption is the biggest technical challenge due to the global domination of mobile devices and the current limitations in energy storage.
The summary talks about an increase in CPU usage. If they use a dedicated H.265 chips in the future (much like they use H.264 chips now) can they not optimize the hardware to minimize CPU and power use? I'm just wondering from the perspective of mobile/phone users if H.265 is going to dominate or will H.264 still be the standard for mobile.
Re:This is great news! (Score:4, Insightful)
Storage isn't a problem, it's the cheapest part of the equation. Energy consumption is the biggest technical challenge due to the global domination of mobile devices and the current limitations in energy storage.
But there are bandwidth limitations on many devices. Limitations which are generally fine now for 1080p, but could be a problem with "something better", or with multiple streams of "something better".
Plus, this article deals with the compression part of the video encoding. Most media is decompressed many many times, but only compressed once. It is reasonable to assume that decompression will be more taxing with x265 compared to x264, but that isn't a part of this article. How much more CPU is required for decompressing x265 compared to x264? That isn't so clear at the moment, and since the code isn't finalized, results today may have no bearing on tomorrow anyhow.
Re:A shame that they/he 'stole' the x265 name,.. (Score:5, Insightful)
we have an agreement which allows us to utilize x264 code in x265
You don't need an 'agreement' to use x264 code because x264 is licensed [videolan.org] under the terms of the GNU GPL v2.0. What, exactly, is this agreement supposed to permit?
Hardware Decode (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's anything like H.264/x264 then I expect to have the hardware to decode H.265/x265 in my laptop about 2 years after movies and tv shows are being distributed in this format, but 2 years before there are any linux drivers for the hardware decoders.