Moscow State University Releases 10th HEVC Video Codec Comparison (compression.ru)

An anonymous reader writes: The Graphics and Media Lab Video Group of Moscow State University has released its tenth video codecs comparison. This latest comparison focuses on HEVC codecs and includes some non-HEVC codecs such as x264 and VP9. The report concludes that Intel's MSS HEVC Software codec leads the pack in the "fast transcoding" use case whereas x265 takes the lead in the "ripping" use case. VP9 compares favorably to the HEVC codecs in the fixed quality and the speed versus quality test cases. See the PDF version of the report for more details.

Comments

There is a cost with all that

[QuantumReality]

Encoding times. You can't squeeze more in less space without cost, cost here are cpu cycles. Encoding times of higher quality stuff which i did was about 5-6 times longer than comparable quality of x264. But it's size was around 40-50% smaller than x264 one. There is a cost not only in encoding, there is a cost in decoding too, it takes a lot more cpu cycles to decode x265. Either way HEVC is VERY GOOD codec.

Re:There is a cost with all that

[slaker]

The first time I played an MP3, my 486 sputtered and couldn't manage an unbroken audio stream. The first time I played a DVD, I needed a dedicated daughterboard to handle decoding.

Right now, HEVC needs decent hardware and encoding takes a good long while. But it does play back fine on everything I have sitting around, going back to 3rd generation Core i CPUs, even with just Intel graphics. The i3 NUC in my living room doesn't have any problem with it at all. My STBs can't do it, but I can hand transcoding off to Plex and then they're fine as well. Given another year and everybody well catch or surpass Amazon's FireTV and have support for it as well. At that point, just like MP3s, MPEG2 and x.264, we'll be back to taking hardware support for granted.