LGPL H.265 Codec Implementation Available; Encoding To Come Later 141
New submitter Zyrill writes "The German company Stuttgarter Struktur AG has released a free and open source implementation of the H.265 codec, also termed 'High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)' which is now available on Github. At the same video quality, H.265 promises roughly half the bitrate as compared to H.264. Also, resolutions up to 8K UHD (7680 × 4320 px) are supported. The software is licensed under LGPL. Quoting from the homepage where the software is also available for download: '[This software] is written from scratch in plain C for simplicity and efficiency. Its simple API makes it easy to integrate it into other software. Currently, libde265 only decodes intra frames, inter-frame decoding is under construction. Encoding is planned to be added afterwards.'"
Re:chicken and the egg problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably somebody out in the world currently has a non-open H.265 encoder. You're being obtuse even by AC standards.
Re:Patents. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are wrong. It's not meaningless, because in the country where I live we don't have software patents. I understand how you may feel it's meaningless for you though but that doesn't mean that it's meaningless in general. Also, I believe that this is distributed in source form and thus is not violating any patents. This makes it even less meaningless.
Re:Hardware acceleration? (Score:3, Insightful)
My Galaxy Tab 7.7 is MUCH more convenient to use on a train/bus than a desktop/"normal PC" (and it plays regular 1080p H.264 files perfectly, thank you very much). More convenient than any laptop as well. Just because YOU have the time to sit in front of a desktop to watch a video doesn't mean that everyone has to do the same.
My media consumption is made either on my tablet or on my TV's internal H.264 player. I'll probably get a media player to replace the TV's player when its capabilities no longer suit me. Since 99% of all HD videos play perfectly there, I see no reason to waste money on a media player now to play that extra 1%; and there is no way I'll get a full PC on my living room. And most of the people I know are in a similar situation.
If you encode files in a way that nobody will care to decode, your work is useless.
Signed, a more experienced encoder than you.