I read that the biggest obstacle making h.265 a new standard is the big increase in computing power it takes to encode it. It hasn't been practically viable (until now?). Decoding should supposedly be less CPU intense than h.264. At least that's what they said during the early days press conferences. So that phone playback should be fine without any new hardware. Has HEVC encoding finally matured? I've always thought HEVC HD streaming was a key component to launch a fully revamped Apple TV btw.
So they only do partial processing in fixed function hardware and the rest using programmable shaders. Still, they say even lower end processors can handle 4K decoding and they are aiming to have real-time 1080p encoders.
This should help the likes of Netflix who have been struggling with bandwidth problems.
It would be good if Apple made an H.265 decoder for Quicktime Pro but I doubt it.
Now it's becoming clear why the A8 has twice the transistors. First they announce improved image signal processing for the camera. Now we see it has H.265 encoding/decoding.
I'm betting these two features sucked up a good chunk of those extra transistors. Add in an extra GPU core and storage for the secure enclave and that's probably where that extra billion transistors went.
BTW, when is iOS going to support the royalty free and vastly superior VP9¡
Abstract — This work presents a performance comparison of the two latest video coding standards H.264/MPEG-AVC and H.265/MPEG-HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) as well as the recently published proprietary video coding scheme VP9. According to the experimental results, which were ob- tained for a whole test set of video sequences by using similar encoding configurations for all three examined representative encoders, H.265/MPEG-HEVC provides significant average bit-rate savings of 43.3% and 39.3% relative to VP9 and H.264/MPEG-AVC, respectively. As a particular aspect of the conducted experiments, it turned out that the VP9 encoder produces an average bit-rate overhead of 8.4% at the same objective quality, when compared to an open H.264/MPEG- AVC encoder implementation – the x264 encoder. On the other hand, the typical encoding times of the VP9 encoder are more than 100 times higher than those measured for the x264 encoder. When compared to the full-fledged H.265/MPEG- HEVC reference software encoder implementation, the VP9 encoding times are lower by a factor of 7.35, on average.
VP9 is very inferior overall, and royalties are not an issue except to filmmakers, studios, and distributors, and even then, these royalties aren't excessive. VP9 targets streaming because, Google/YouTube, but H.265 will be equal or better, so I expect that Apple will be an early adopter for iTunes content, as some have mentioned. For user content, hardware encoding is necessary and Intel, AMD and Nvidia will support H.265 and VP9 in next generation GPU's.
So late next year, when 4K BD comes out, it will almost exclusively be encoded in H.265.
To sum it up, VP9 is just a Google play to avoid paying minimal licensing and plays to the FOSS crowd.
So they only do partial processing in fixed function hardware and the rest using programmable shaders. Still, they say even lower end processors can handle 4K decoding and they are aiming to have real-time 1080p encoders.
This should help the likes of Netflix who have been struggling with bandwidth problems.
It would be good if Apple made an H.265 decoder for Quicktime Pro but I doubt it.
This will lead to a new ATV, shortly, with the chip and h265 ecoding. Netflix already uses h265 for their 4k (for example - house of cards). However, the limitation seems be more HDMI. Would need at least 1 port with HDMI 2.0. I have a new Sony 4K, which will have a firmware update to raise 1 port, maybe its two, to HDMI 2.0 specs. Not sure of other manufacturers of 4K sets if they have that option or not. The only other company that has a 4K movie delivery hardware type product is Sony. They just announced that their movie server device will now be avail for use with other manufacturers sets, was only avail for use with Sony sets before. Not sure what codec they use but I think theirs downloads in full 4K quality and think it does it overnight but not sure. Apple getting their foot in the door with the only non-app with 4K content would be huge.
You didn't have to buy a new computer to see H264, but if you tried a full HD mp4 with those computers, there would likely be stutters (if lucky), or just stop (because it can'T keep up); significantly lower resolution could be OK though. Hardware assist is what made it possible to use extensively.
I really don't see the point of 4K video on such a small lense and sensor. No point at all. There's a lot of work to be done just getting 1080P videos up to snuff on most smartphones and people want to do 4K... Why? Remember, Apple doesn't even do more 8MP on their Camera because of image quality, so why would they do a really crappy 4K video even if they could now (which they probably can)...
VP9 is very inferior overall, and royalties are not an issue except to filmmakers, studios, and distributors, and even then, these royalties aren't excessive. VP9 targets streaming because, Google/YouTube, but H.265 will be equal or better, so I expect that Apple will be an early adopter for iTunes content, as some have mentioned. For user content, hardware encoding is necessary and Intel, AMD and Nvidia will support H.265 and VP9 in next generation GPU's.
So late next year, when 4K BD comes out, it will almost exclusively be encoded in H.265.
To sum it up, VP9 is just a Google play to avoid paying minimal licensing and plays to the FOSS crowd.
Industry-wide, the HEVC codecs are still being developed and refined. 2015 is a reasonable time to expect to start seeing more than a trickle of HEVC video in the wild, as developers get time to incorporate more mature codecs into their products. Today, there's a CLI-based codec that anyone can used, but not yet a proper GUI-based solution. Handbrake, for example, has baked rudimentary HEVC support into their latest beta, but it lacks many of HEVC's features and efficiencies. It will take at least a few more months for the HEVC ball to get rolling into the mainstream.
So, yes, Apple just made an engineering step ahead of the rest of the world, but so far that advantage is limited to FaceTime calls %u2014 it doesn't yet mean we can watch HEVC-encoded movies on the iPhone 6.
It works fine on my 2012 rMBP, but if you look in Activity Monitor it fluctuates between using 2.5 and 3.5 cores If Apple adds software HEVC to Quicktime Player or iTunes hopefully they will use OpenCL to offload some of that to the GPU.
It works fine on my 2012 rMBP, but if you look in Activity Monitor it fluctuates between using 2.5 and 3.5 cores If Apple adds software HEVC to Quicktime Player or iTunes hopefully they will use OpenCL to offload some of that to the GPU.
That would be a solution but I really think they will have a HW decoder onboard before they make that shift in iTS.
That would be a solution but I really think they will have a HW decoder onboard before they make that shift in iTS.
If h.265 decoding is something that the bulk of iOS devices can't do, or can't do without severly impacting battery life, then I wouldn't expect to see a wholesale shift by Apple from h.264 (except perhaps for stuff higher resolution than 1080p). It would make sense only when the bulk of your iOS user base can use the new standard, unless you're using it to try to get people to upgrade to new devices.
He was the first to spot it? It was published on Apple's website the day of the announcement. Yes, it's sort of something you'd miss, but I imagine most people who scanned the page saw it. H.265 compatibility is not a huge surprise...the Samsung S4 has had an early version for months now, but the iPhone 6 having it means that Apple will likely start encoding content to it for that device's consumption. I imagine that future iPads and Apple TVs will get this feature soon enough...maybe even the Apple Watch.
Isn't video compression/decompression highly processor-intensive? Given battery life concerns I'm not expecting much in the way of video from the Apple Watch, at least not in the short term.
BTW, am I the only one who dislikes the new i-free branding. "Apple Watch" is a mouthful. To me it sounds kind of generic, while at the same time diluting the Apple brand.
BTW, am I the only one who dislikes the new i-free branding. "Apple Watch" is a mouthful. To me it sounds kind of generic, while at the same time diluting the Apple brand.
I'd go so far as to say there's a significant part of the potential market that does not know iDevices were exclusively from Apple. For instance I've heard way too many people refer to other smartphones as "iPhones" and even a couple in a store commenting on a generic tablet as an iPad. I think it's a wise move for Apple to start branding their services as, well, Apple rather than iStuff.
I'd go so far as to say there's a significant part of the potential market that does not know iDevices were exclusively from Apple. For instance I've heard way too many people refer to other smartphones as "iPhones" and even a couple in a store commenting on a generic tablet as an iPad. I think it's a wise move for Apple to start branding their services as, well, Apple rather than iStuff.
Now that mention it I've seen that, too. Good point.
Comments
Has HEVC encoding finally matured?
I've always thought HEVC HD streaming was a key component to launch a fully revamped Apple TV btw.
Likely never Because it's not superior?
Given that it's used for FaceTime here, Apple had to get it to do real-time encoding, which is pretty impressive if it's 720p.
Intel's Broadwell and NVidia Maxwell went with a hybrid approach:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8355/intel-broadwell-architecture-preview/3
So they only do partial processing in fixed function hardware and the rest using programmable shaders. Still, they say even lower end processors can handle 4K decoding and they are aiming to have real-time 1080p encoders.
This should help the likes of Netflix who have been struggling with bandwidth problems.
It would be good if Apple made an H.265 decoder for Quicktime Pro but I doubt it.
Now it's becoming clear why the A8 has twice the transistors. First they announce improved image signal processing for the camera. Now we see it has H.265 encoding/decoding.
I'm betting these two features sucked up a good chunk of those extra transistors. Add in an extra GPU core and storage for the secure enclave and that's probably where that extra billion transistors went.
BTW, when is iOS going to support the royalty free and vastly superior VP9¡
http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf
Abstract — This work presents a performance comparison of the two latest video coding standards H.264/MPEG-AVC and H.265/MPEG-HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) as well as the recently published proprietary video coding scheme VP9. According to the experimental results, which were ob- tained for a whole test set of video sequences by using similar encoding configurations for all three examined representative encoders, H.265/MPEG-HEVC provides significant average bit-rate savings of 43.3% and 39.3% relative to VP9 and H.264/MPEG-AVC, respectively. As a particular aspect of the conducted experiments, it turned out that the VP9 encoder produces an average bit-rate overhead of 8.4% at the same objective quality, when compared to an open H.264/MPEG- AVC encoder implementation – the x264 encoder. On the other hand, the typical encoding times of the VP9 encoder are more than 100 times higher than those measured for the x264 encoder. When compared to the full-fledged H.265/MPEG- HEVC reference software encoder implementation, the VP9 encoding times are lower by a factor of 7.35, on average.
VP9 is very inferior overall, and royalties are not an issue except to filmmakers, studios, and distributors, and even then, these royalties aren't excessive. VP9 targets streaming because, Google/YouTube, but H.265 will be equal or better, so I expect that Apple will be an early adopter for iTunes content, as some have mentioned. For user content, hardware encoding is necessary and Intel, AMD and Nvidia will support H.265 and VP9 in next generation GPU's.
So late next year, when 4K BD comes out, it will almost exclusively be encoded in H.265.
To sum it up, VP9 is just a Google play to avoid paying minimal licensing and plays to the FOSS crowd.
Given that it's used for FaceTime here, Apple had to get it to do real-time encoding, which is pretty impressive if it's 720p.
Intel's Broadwell and NVidia Maxwell went with a hybrid approach:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8355/intel-broadwell-architecture-preview/3
So they only do partial processing in fixed function hardware and the rest using programmable shaders. Still, they say even lower end processors can handle 4K decoding and they are aiming to have real-time 1080p encoders.
This should help the likes of Netflix who have been struggling with bandwidth problems.
It would be good if Apple made an H.265 decoder for Quicktime Pro but I doubt it.
This will lead to a new ATV, shortly, with the chip and h265 ecoding. Netflix already uses h265 for their 4k (for example - house of cards). However, the limitation seems be more HDMI. Would need at least 1 port with HDMI 2.0. I have a new Sony 4K, which will have a firmware update to raise 1 port, maybe its two, to HDMI 2.0 specs. Not sure of other manufacturers of 4K sets if they have that option or not. The only other company that has a 4K movie delivery hardware type product is Sony. They just announced that their movie server device will now be avail for use with other manufacturers sets, was only avail for use with Sony sets before. Not sure what codec they use but I think theirs downloads in full 4K quality and think it does it overnight but not sure. Apple getting their foot in the door with the only non-app with 4K content would be huge.
You didn't have to buy a new computer to see H264, but if you tried a full HD mp4 with those computers, there would likely be stutters (if lucky), or just stop (because it can'T keep up); significantly lower resolution could be OK though. Hardware assist is what made it possible to use extensively.
I really don't see the point of 4K video on such a small lense and sensor. No point at all. There's a lot of work to be done just getting 1080P videos up to snuff on most smartphones and people want to do 4K... Why? Remember, Apple doesn't even do more 8MP on their Camera because of image quality, so why would they do a really crappy 4K video even if they could now (which they probably can)...
I thought everyone knew what ¡ means. Otherwise I would have used /s.
I noticed this right away in the tech specs, it's the prelude to a 4K Apple TV or 4K Apple Television....
Sorry never seen an i mean /s
So, yes, Apple just made an engineering step ahead of the rest of the world, but so far that advantage is limited to FaceTime calls %u2014 it doesn't yet mean we can watch HEVC-encoded movies on the iPhone 6.
I don't know about TS but I've been saying for weeks that Apple needs to step up and support h.265. But I was thinking more about iTunes
There's a Mac version of VLC here that can play HEVC, and some sample movies.
http://www.libde265.org/blog/2014/04/02/hevc-4k-ultra-hd-media-player-vlc-for-mac-os-x/
It works fine on my 2012 rMBP, but if you look in Activity Monitor it fluctuates between using 2.5 and 3.5 cores
If Apple adds software HEVC to Quicktime Player or iTunes hopefully they will use OpenCL to offload some of that to the GPU.
That would be a solution but I really think they will have a HW decoder onboard before they make that shift in iTS.
If h.265 decoding is something that the bulk of iOS devices can't do, or can't do without severly impacting battery life, then I wouldn't expect to see a wholesale shift by Apple from h.264 (except perhaps for stuff higher resolution than 1080p). It would make sense only when the bulk of your iOS user base can use the new standard, unless you're using it to try to get people to upgrade to new devices.
He was the first to spot it? It was published on Apple's website the day of the announcement. Yes, it's sort of something you'd miss, but I imagine most people who scanned the page saw it. H.265 compatibility is not a huge surprise...the Samsung S4 has had an early version for months now, but the iPhone 6 having it means that Apple will likely start encoding content to it for that device's consumption. I imagine that future iPads and Apple TVs will get this feature soon enough...maybe even the Apple Watch.
Isn't video compression/decompression highly processor-intensive? Given battery life concerns I'm not expecting much in the way of video from the Apple Watch, at least not in the short term.
BTW, am I the only one who dislikes the new i-free branding. "Apple Watch" is a mouthful. To me it sounds kind of generic, while at the same time diluting the Apple brand.
I love it. I want the official i-branding to end.
Now that mention it I've seen that, too. Good point.