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

Re:Unbiased source?

[NatasRevol]

Not-for-profit does not mean not-with-costs.

Re:Unbiased source?

[Curunir_wolf]

Name another media company that went out of their way to develop a patent-free media codec that was independent and competitive with other codecs of the time? (Google Dirac)

There is nothing royalty-free about HEVC.

Re:And still unsupported just about everywhere

[PRMan]

They contain hardware AVC decoders, not HEVC decoders. This is why YouTube now plays like crap on old netbooks unless you install a plugin that forces MP4 instead of VP9.