Google promises to dramatically shrink 4K bandwidth with upcoming VP10 video codec

Posted:
in General Discussion edited September 2015
Google is working on a new open-source video codec, VP10, that should shrink the amount of bandwidth required for 4K video to half that of VP9, and a quarter of Apple's current preferred compression format, H.264.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, one of the current crop of 4K movies.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, one of the current crop of 4K movies.


VP10 should also offer a variety of visual enhancements over its predecessor including properties like a wider color gamut, faster framerates, and better dynamic range between highlights and shadows, CNet reported.

Google has been using VP9 for 4K on platforms like YouTube and Chrome, but partly because of Apple devices, H.264 is also effectively the industry standard. Chipmakers such as Samsung, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Broadcom have promised VP9 support however, and many 2015 TVs have VP9-ready decoders.

VP10 is said to be two years away, and require about 40 percent more work to decode than VP9.

In the interim VP9's main competition will be H.265, also known as HEVC. While it offers similar performance, Google may be able to gain ground because of the high patent royalties being asked for by the HEVC Advance group. These amount to 0.5 percent of all revenue stemming from HEVC-encoded video, as well as an 80-cent charge per mobile device and $1.50 per TV. By contrast, MPEG LA -- the creator of both H.264 and H.265 -- charges just 20 cents per H.264 device. Other companies may also demand patent revenues.

Cisco and Mozilla have developed alternative codecs known as Thor and Daala, and are further collaborating on a royalty-free standard called NetVC due around the same time as VP10.

Apple has yet to take a full step into the world of 4K, though it is believed that next-generation iPhones will support 4K recording, and the company has quietly been amassing 4K material for iTunes, though it's not yet on sale.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 95
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member

    Didn't those guys at Pied Piper create this compression algorithm? And Google just ripped them off? /s

  • Reply 2 of 95
    The iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 have h.265 (HEVC) hardware codecs.
  • Reply 3 of 95

    Apple has h.265 on A8 devices (iPhone 6, iPad Air 2, etc...)

  • Reply 4 of 95
    gerritgerrit Posts: 29member
    If Apple's already getting 4K source material, I'd think they're already encoding it to.. which means they've picked their 4K horse. Either a low-bit rate (relative to the resolution) h264 (like YouTube) or h265. If they picked h265, well, we're probably going to know that Sept 9th, and Apple isn't going to pay royalties for *2 codecs* so VP10 will be out for good.
  • Reply 5 of 95
    solipsismysolipsismy Posts: 5,099member
    VP10 is said to be two years away, and require about 40 percent more work to decode than VP9.

    LOL You know what else is over 2 years away? H.265/HEVC. But that's 2 years in the past when it was ratified and we still have little support for it because it takes many years after that for the HW, SW and, then finally, the encoded content to show up. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation which is why these things tend to take a long time. I have no doubt Google Alphabet will soup-up VP9 to VP10, but I think H.265/HEVC will not only be the standard still be more efficient in terms of performance and power usage than VP10. At best, I think VP10 will be able to have a slightly better compression ratio by the time it shows up, but at an unfortunate cost to performance and power usage, like VP9 compared to H.264.
  • Reply 6 of 95
    gerrit wrote: »
    If Apple's already getting 4K source material, I'd think they're already encoding it to.. which means they've picked their 4K horse. Either a low-bit rate (relative to the resolution) h264 (like YouTube) or h265. If they picked h265, well, we're probably going to know that Sept 9th, and Apple isn't going to pay royalties for *2 codecs* so VP10 will be out for good.

    The A8 has H.265 support already, so that's settled IMO.
  • Reply 7 of 95
    thejdthejd Posts: 37member

    It will be interesting to see which way Apple goes.  I wouldn't put it past Google to put some kind of back door in the metadata to skim data from a movie library.

  • Reply 8 of 95
    bugsnwbugsnw Posts: 717member
    Article is confusing...is Apple asking for the .5% of all revenue and $1.50 per tv?

    That seems a bit high, whoever is doing the asking.
  • Reply 9 of 95
    ksecksec Posts: 1,569member

    Google comes out with another crap PR again? Or may be just their On2 / Video Codec department.

     

    H.264, picking the right Encoder, and setting and parameters, will have won majority of the comparison against VP9. Most of the time, VP9 doesn't even match H.264. As a matter of fact, picking default with x264 ( Open Sources H.264 encoder, and considered one of the best ) you would still have won.

     

    VP10 is actually pretty great, depending on scenario it does perform better then H.264 in some cases and more of less equal in other.

    But if you just picked default then VP10 will properly be slightly better then H.264 in majority of cases.

     

    Which leads to H.265, is actually available now, although most encoder will still takes time to tune and mature. And this will take a long time no matter how many man hours or money you throw in. But the results of most of these H.265 encoder are already very good, beating VP10 in many cases with lots of headroom to work on. And there are devices shipping with H.265 decoder already.

       

     

    I guess the reason why Google is generating some noise right now is because H.265 patents holder just all of a sudden decide to be greedy and spilt between two different licensing group as stated in the article. Cisco Thor is basically all the H.264 patents + all the H.265 Cisco holds and released as Open Sources. 

  • Reply 10 of 95

    Can't wait for Adobe to glom VP10 for the next version of Flash.

  • Reply 11 of 95
    bugsnw wrote: »
    Article is confusing...is Apple asking for the .5% of all revenue and $1.50 per tv?

    That seems a bit high, whoever is doing the asking.

    Those kinds of fees aren't unheard of. That's why the original Xbox only played DVD's with the official remote; the remote covered the licensing cost owed to the DVD Forum.
  • Reply 12 of 95
    So which stolen IP is Google going to use us VP10?

    And HEVC Advance doesn't control HEVC (H.265). They have a bunch of patents as does MPEG-LA. Except their patents haven't been confirmed as being necessary for HECVC, so their 0.5% royalty claim is ridiculous. Who's going to sign up to pay them without a full understanding of the patents involved and whether or not they're even valid? And with MPEG-LA charging less for their HEVC patens, how will HEVC Advance justify their rates? They'll have to show their patents make up the larger portion of HEVC.
  • Reply 13 of 95
    Didn't those guys at Pied Piper create this compression algorithm? And Google just ripped them off? /s

    Careful now. Gatorguy has just been paged (and I am sure he's busy Googling at this very moment for the right comeback)..... :lol:
  • Reply 14 of 95
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    So Google’s the new Sony, refusing to use actual standards and just making their own incompatible garbage. I hate WebM and I hate the fact that they don’t encode YouTube higher than 720 MP4 anymore.

  • Reply 15 of 95



    Promises, promises...

    If it ever comes out, patent suits will be filed and they will shut it down.

    H.265 will bring 8K support, why compare vapor ware to H.264

     

    Here is a comparison.

     








































      H.265/HEVC H.264/AVC
    Names  MPEG-H, HEVC, Part 2 MPEG 4 Part 10, AVC
    Approved date  2013 2003
    Progression  Successor to H.264/AVC Successor to MPEG-2 Part 
    Key improvement * 40-50% bit rate reduction compared with H.264 at the same visual quality

    * It is likely to implement Ultra HD, 2K, 4K for Broadcast and Online (OTT)
    * 40-50% bit rate reduction compared with MPEG-2 Part

    * Available to deliver HD sources for Broadcast and Online
    Support up to 8K Yes  No. Support up to 4K. 
    Support up to 300 fps Yes  No. support up to 59.94 fps only.

     
  • Reply 16 of 95
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

    So Google’s the new Sony, refusing to use actual standards and just making their own incompatible garbage. I hate WebM and I hate the fact that they don’t encode YouTube higher than 720 MP4 anymore.




    Ooo...that's sure to bring him out to play! ;)

  • Reply 17 of 95
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Google "promises" alot of things. Almost none of it ever comes true.
  • Reply 18 of 95
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by AppleSauce007 View Post

    Promises, promises...

    If it ever comes out, patent suits will be filed and they will shut it down.

    H.265 will bring 8K support, why compare vapor ware to H.264

     


     

    But how long until we see widespread hardware en/decoding of H.265? That’s what will dictate adoption. HandBrake can already make you an H.265 file (what can even play it?) but doing so takes 5x longer than an MP4 of the same thing.

  • Reply 19 of 95
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member

    Promises, promises...
    If it ever comes out, patent suits will be filed and they will shut it down.
    H.265 will bring 8K support, why compare vapor ware to H.264

    Here is a comparison.
     

    <table border="1" style="color:rgb(51,51,51);width:1041px;"><tbody>[TR]
    [TH] [/TH]
    [TH]H.265/HEVC[/TH]
    [TH]H.264/AVC[/TH]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Names [/TH]
    [TD]MPEG-H, HEVC, Part 2[/TD]
    [TD]MPEG 4 Part 10, AVC[/TD]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Approved date [/TH]
    [TD]2013[/TD]
    [TD]2003[/TD]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Progression [/TH]
    [TD]Successor to H.264/AVC[/TD]
    [TD]Successor to MPEG-2 Part [/TD]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Key improvement[/TH]
    [TD]* 40-50% bit rate reduction compared with H.264 at the same visual quality

    * It is likely to implement Ultra HD, 2K, 4K for Broadcast and Online (OTT)[/TD]
    [TD]* 40-50% bit rate reduction compared with MPEG-2 Part

    * Available to deliver HD sources for Broadcast and Online[/TD]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Support up to 8K[/TH]
    [TD]Yes [/TD]
    [TD]No. Support up to 4K. [/TD]
    [/TR]
    [TR]
    [TH]Support up to 300 fps[/TH]
    [TD]Yes [/TD]
    [TD]No. support up to 59.94 fps only.

     [/TD]
    [/TR]
    </tbody></table>

    Not to mention H.265 is already here. Whether x.265, FFmepg, and apps like Handbrake, VLC, MPV2, etc.
  • Reply 20 of 95
    But how long until we see widespread hardware en/decoding of H.265? That’s what will dictate adoption. HandBrake can already make you an H.265 file (what can even play it?) but doing so takes 5x longer than an MP4 of the same thing.

    Intel's just barely added HW support in Skylake.
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