Anyone who does a lot of photo or video editing, processing or encoding, CAD, software development with long compile times, machine learning, etc. These are workstation class chips.
Gaming is an important segment of the PC market, but it isn't the only compute-intensive workload.
Read the article. x265 is roughly TWICE as efficient as x264. That means that video bandwidth can be cut in half. Given that more than 70% of all bits crossing IP networks (private and public) are video, that is an astounding amount of bandwidth that could be freed up for better purposes.
The only results that showed VP9 matching x265 were with PSNR measurements of Visual Quality optimized encodes. These are not valid measurements (if you want to measure PSNR of x264 or x265, you need to use --tune psnr, which Netflix did for a different set of encodes).
And here's a quote from the article above... "I asked Netflix which set of results they felt was most significant. Their response was, “We believe that VMAF results will have the best correlation to user perception of quality. We use this metric, and sanity-check against other metrics (PSNR, SSIM, VIF, etc.) internally.” In other words, according to Netflix, the results shown in Figure 1 were the most relevant of the three."
It's true that the H.265 format (like H.264) is patent-encumbered, and that device manufacturers need to pay patent license royalties. But these aren't the only costs. Don't ignore the cost of bandwidth and storage, which can easily exceed the cost of a one-time patent license royalty. How about the quality of experience? If you're in the movie streaming business, QoE is paramount. By the way, Netflix didn't test 4K content. The tests that seemed to show that VP9 was as good or better than x265 were not valid results. The most valid results (VMAF comparing visual-quality tuned encodes) showed x265 was ~20% more efficient than VP9. From the article above "I asked Netflix which set of results they felt was most significant. Their response was, “We believe that VMAF results will have the best correlation to user perception of quality. We use this metric, and sanity-check against other metrics (PSNR, SSIM, VIF, etc.) internally.” In other words, according to Netflix, the results shown in Figure 1 were the most relevant of the three."
The only thing preventing HEVC/H.265 from being supported natively in browsers is the patent license terms. The developers of x265 have made a proposal to fix this situation. See http://x265.org/proposal-accel...
You must be referring to an article on Toms Hardware. The journalist was referring to the same Netflix study, but he was confused by the results, and he jumped the gun. He changed his title the next day.
In the Netflix study they used x264 and x265 settings that are optimized for visual quality, and they also did test encodes with settings optimized for PSNR measurement. But then Netflix actually published results of PSNR measurements using the visual quality optimized encodes, which are not meaningful results. On these results, for 1080P content, VP9 appeared to be slightly better than x265.
What matters most with video encoders is the actual visual quality they can produce at any target bit rate. Objective measurements like PSNR and SSIM don't correlate strongly with human subjective visual quality testing. Netflix sponsored development of a new visual quality tool, VMAF, which correlates with human subjective testing much more strongly. With VMAF, Netflix showed that x265 produces identical quality to VP9 at ~ 20% lower bit rates.
HEVC / H.265 was developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding, a combination of ISO's MPEG and ITU's VCEG. The contributors to the HEVC standard agreed to license their technology on FRAND terms, just as all ISO and ITU standards developers do.
I've tested it on a 32 core machine, but not a 64 core machine. It scales well, in part through the brute-force technique of GOP level parallelization. x265 is far more parallelized than the HM reference encoder, but we still have a way to go before we have it fully parallelized. The project is being run by MulticoreWare, and as the name implies, parallel processing is our core competence.
This project is not a surprise to any of the x264 developers - we have been in discussions with them for many weeks, and we have an agreement which allows us to utilize x264 code in x265. The x264 developers haven't had a chance to make contributions yet, as we just opened the project up to participation by the open source development community. We welcome their participation, and will do everything we can to enable and encourage it.
x265 is an HEVC encoder implementation only.
To answer the general question, H.265 is more compute intensive to decode than H.264, but the compute requirements for HD decoding are not unreasonable. Software decoding of HD HEVC is possible on a dual-core ARM system, and x86 systems will not have a problem. Of course, as with any video codec, hardware manufacturers will implement hardware decoders. Some have been announced. Expect more announcements in the coming months.
This is a software implementation. Commercial companies must license necessary patents separately, just as they do when they implement MPEG-2, H.264, etc.
The HM reference encoder takes roughly 40 seconds to encode one frame of 1080P video on a dual Xeon (16 core) server. x265 can encode 1080P at roughly 11 frames per second today. The project is still early in development, and there are many features (lookahead, B-frames, rate control, etc) and efficiency/performance optimizations left to be done, but we are making good progress. I would encourage you to try it before reaching any conclusions.
Having spent the first 10 years of my career running glass mastering operations for 2 of the top companies in the business... I thought I should point a few things out.
The same accelerated environmental testing that this company cites shows that a well manufactured (pre-recorded) CD or DVD will also last well in excess of 1000 years, assuming it is handled properly and not subjected to extreme environmental conditions. Recordable discs have a dye layer that is more susceptible to degradation, but a well manufactured CD-R or DVD-R will probably outlast the useful life of the data.
"DiamonDisc the burner etches much deeper pits" - seems to show a lack of understanding of how CDs and DVDs work. To optimize the signal the pit should be an optimal width and depth. Deeper is not better.
No reflective layer? How do you read the disc? I'll bet it's hard to meet the reflectivity spec without a reflective layer. I wonder what the HF signals look like... the error rates, the jitter. Have these discs been measured by an independent expert? If they aren't in spec to begin with, I don't care that they last 1000 years.
To make CDs and DVDs economically, they need to be injection molded out of polycarbonate. In any case, the disc must have a clear layer that is 0.6 mm thick, allowing the drive to properly focus on the information layer. The "DiamonDisc" DVDs are almost certainly molded out of polycarbonate. If the polycarbonate breaks down in a standard DVD, it will break down in this DVD.
If you want long lasting DVD-Rs, there are companies making them that have been in business for decades. Get DVDs made with a pure gold reflective layer... they'll last longer than we will.
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Anyone who does a lot of photo or video editing, processing or encoding, CAD, software development with long compile times, machine learning, etc. These are workstation class chips. Gaming is an important segment of the PC market, but it isn't the only compute-intensive workload.
x265 is open source software, not an FPGA implementation. Why are you calling it proprietary cruft?
Read the article. x265 is roughly TWICE as efficient as x264. That means that video bandwidth can be cut in half. Given that more than 70% of all bits crossing IP networks (private and public) are video, that is an astounding amount of bandwidth that could be freed up for better purposes.
In the article... http://www.streamingmedia.com/...
The only results that showed VP9 matching x265 were with PSNR measurements of Visual Quality optimized encodes. These are not valid measurements (if you want to measure PSNR of x264 or x265, you need to use --tune psnr, which Netflix did for a different set of encodes). And here's a quote from the article above... "I asked Netflix which set of results they felt was most significant. Their response was, “We believe that VMAF results will have the best correlation to user perception of quality. We use this metric, and sanity-check against other metrics (PSNR, SSIM, VIF, etc.) internally.” In other words, according to Netflix, the results shown in Figure 1 were the most relevant of the three."
It's true that the H.265 format (like H.264) is patent-encumbered, and that device manufacturers need to pay patent license royalties. But these aren't the only costs. Don't ignore the cost of bandwidth and storage, which can easily exceed the cost of a one-time patent license royalty. How about the quality of experience? If you're in the movie streaming business, QoE is paramount. By the way, Netflix didn't test 4K content. The tests that seemed to show that VP9 was as good or better than x265 were not valid results. The most valid results (VMAF comparing visual-quality tuned encodes) showed x265 was ~20% more efficient than VP9. From the article above "I asked Netflix which set of results they felt was most significant. Their response was, “We believe that VMAF results will have the best correlation to user perception of quality. We use this metric, and sanity-check against other metrics (PSNR, SSIM, VIF, etc.) internally.” In other words, according to Netflix, the results shown in Figure 1 were the most relevant of the three."
The only thing preventing HEVC/H.265 from being supported natively in browsers is the patent license terms. The developers of x265 have made a proposal to fix this situation. See http://x265.org/proposal-accel...
You must be referring to an article on Toms Hardware. The journalist was referring to the same Netflix study, but he was confused by the results, and he jumped the gun. He changed his title the next day. In the Netflix study they used x264 and x265 settings that are optimized for visual quality, and they also did test encodes with settings optimized for PSNR measurement. But then Netflix actually published results of PSNR measurements using the visual quality optimized encodes, which are not meaningful results. On these results, for 1080P content, VP9 appeared to be slightly better than x265. What matters most with video encoders is the actual visual quality they can produce at any target bit rate. Objective measurements like PSNR and SSIM don't correlate strongly with human subjective visual quality testing. Netflix sponsored development of a new visual quality tool, VMAF, which correlates with human subjective testing much more strongly. With VMAF, Netflix showed that x265 produces identical quality to VP9 at ~ 20% lower bit rates.
HEVC / H.265 was developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding, a combination of ISO's MPEG and ITU's VCEG. The contributors to the HEVC standard agreed to license their technology on FRAND terms, just as all ISO and ITU standards developers do.
I've tested it on a 32 core machine, but not a 64 core machine. It scales well, in part through the brute-force technique of GOP level parallelization. x265 is far more parallelized than the HM reference encoder, but we still have a way to go before we have it fully parallelized. The project is being run by MulticoreWare, and as the name implies, parallel processing is our core competence.
This project is not a surprise to any of the x264 developers - we have been in discussions with them for many weeks, and we have an agreement which allows us to utilize x264 code in x265. The x264 developers haven't had a chance to make contributions yet, as we just opened the project up to participation by the open source development community. We welcome their participation, and will do everything we can to enable and encourage it.
x265 is an HEVC encoder implementation only. To answer the general question, H.265 is more compute intensive to decode than H.264, but the compute requirements for HD decoding are not unreasonable. Software decoding of HD HEVC is possible on a dual-core ARM system, and x86 systems will not have a problem. Of course, as with any video codec, hardware manufacturers will implement hardware decoders. Some have been announced. Expect more announcements in the coming months.
This is a software implementation. Commercial companies must license necessary patents separately, just as they do when they implement MPEG-2, H.264, etc.
The HM reference encoder takes roughly 40 seconds to encode one frame of 1080P video on a dual Xeon (16 core) server. x265 can encode 1080P at roughly 11 frames per second today. The project is still early in development, and there are many features (lookahead, B-frames, rate control, etc) and efficiency/performance optimizations left to be done, but we are making good progress. I would encourage you to try it before reaching any conclusions.
Not true.
Having spent the first 10 years of my career running glass mastering operations for 2 of the top companies in the business... I thought I should point a few things out. The same accelerated environmental testing that this company cites shows that a well manufactured (pre-recorded) CD or DVD will also last well in excess of 1000 years, assuming it is handled properly and not subjected to extreme environmental conditions. Recordable discs have a dye layer that is more susceptible to degradation, but a well manufactured CD-R or DVD-R will probably outlast the useful life of the data. "DiamonDisc the burner etches much deeper pits" - seems to show a lack of understanding of how CDs and DVDs work. To optimize the signal the pit should be an optimal width and depth. Deeper is not better. No reflective layer? How do you read the disc? I'll bet it's hard to meet the reflectivity spec without a reflective layer. I wonder what the HF signals look like... the error rates, the jitter. Have these discs been measured by an independent expert? If they aren't in spec to begin with, I don't care that they last 1000 years. To make CDs and DVDs economically, they need to be injection molded out of polycarbonate. In any case, the disc must have a clear layer that is 0.6 mm thick, allowing the drive to properly focus on the information layer. The "DiamonDisc" DVDs are almost certainly molded out of polycarbonate. If the polycarbonate breaks down in a standard DVD, it will break down in this DVD. If you want long lasting DVD-Rs, there are companies making them that have been in business for decades. Get DVDs made with a pure gold reflective layer... they'll last longer than we will.