BBC Confirms 50% Bitrate Savings For H.265/HEVC Vs H.264/AVC (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: A research team from the BBC has done a series of tests to confirm earlier computations showing a ~50% savings in bit rate for H.265/HEVC compared to video using H.264/AVC at comparable quality. "The subjective tests used a carefully selected set of coded video sequences at four different picture sizes: UHD (3840x2160 and 4096x2048), 1080p (1920x1080), 720p (1280x720) and 480p (832x480), at frame rates of 30Hz, 50Hz, or 60Hz. The video content was chosen to represent diverse spatial and temporal characteristics, and then coded using HEVC and AVC standards at a wide span of bit rates producing a variety of quality levels." Here is the full published analysis. "The tests confirmed the significant compression efficiency improvements achieved in HEVC, verifying the results previously reported using objective quality metrics (PSNR based methods)." The team did not test against VP9, which is shaping up to be an impressive standard as well.

Comments

Your So What moment

[Curunir_wolf]

So what? Who cares? It doesn't matter.

H.265 is simply far too encumbered by "IP" costs and licensing restrictions to be of any use whatsoever. Sure, there are places (like the douchebags at BBC) who will decide to use it, but rational folks should run from it like the bubonic plague. Especially folks that create content. If you create something that uses H.265 as the master source, your copyright is worthless, because you content is now encumbered inside of format that requires you to pay fees if you want to extract it, convert it, distribute it, or even view it. "It can't really be that bad," you say. Sure, you can buy equipment and software that will do that for you, but part of your cost is the partial fee that the manufacturer is paying for licensing.

Someone have a chat with the BBC about putting resources into VP9 instead. It will save them and everyone else a lot of money, pain, lawyer fees and headaches into the future.