![]() ![]() Arguably it’s powerful enough to not need it, but the feature boosts efficiency and may help the GPU decode video without active cooling. There’s just one exception at this moment, and that’s the GTX 960, which is the first and only video card to have full hardware decode support for H.265. HEVC is not popular yet, and developing a hardware decode means designing new silicon - a lengthy process. On the downside, though, this approach takes up valuable die space on a CPU or GPU. Building a hardware decoder into a chip allows for more efficient operation, which means better performance on chips with modest grunt and improved efficiency. Software decoding isn’t the best option, however, because it’s not terribly efficient. What can decode it?Īny computer can decode H.265 using software (in theory, at least). All that’s mandatory is software capable of handling H.265 and a file or stream encoded in it. The freeware VideoLAN player is currently your best bet, but support will be native to PCs with the release of Windows 10. The overlap between systems that can output Ultra HD and those that are too slow to decode HEVC is slim. However, most systems that might choke on decoding a 4K HEVC stream or file can’t output 4K. Throw in the jump to 4K, which is frequently encoded to H.265, and the leap in required compute power is nothing to laugh at. Users who’ve become accustomed to their three-year-old dual-core desktop encoding video in real time, or quicker, may be surprised by the lengthy processing times of encoders compatible with H.265.ĭecoding is less of an issue, but load roughly doubles compared to H.264. As H.265 grows in popularity, however, home users will start to use the new codec to reduce file sizes and decrease upload times. ![]() This is mostly a problem for companies producing content rather than one for consumers, at least for the time being. Higher efficiency usually comes with a cost: complexity. H.265 is far more difficult to encode as a result of its complexity, and can require up to 10 times the compute power to encode at the same speed as H.264. “At the constrained bitrates you might see on a typical PC,” says Tom Vaughan, “we can be up to twice as efficient as h.264.” How demanding is it? Greater efficiency means video can be shown at the same quality while consuming less bandwidth, or bandwidth can be maintained to achieve greater quality. Related: Could BPG be the successor to JPEG? If codec A and codec B both display the same image quality, but the size of A’s file is twenty percent smaller, then A is more efficient. The less data a codec can use to display an image without degrading its quality, the more efficient it is. This leads to an inevitable question: If it’s been working for so long, and is compatible with virtually every device consumers own today, why replace it?Įfficiency is the answer. It was finalized all the way back in 2003 and really started to catch on a few years later. H.264 is an incredibly popular codec that forms the basis of most online video shown today. It’s the most popular way to encode video to HEVC, but it’s not the only choice. The standard was defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and the Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG), and each calls it by a different name, but the standard is the same.Īnd what about x265? That’s the open-source encoding project, not the standard. Each is a different name for the same codec. So, what’s the difference between H.265 and HEVC? There isn’t one. Video encoding isn’t defined by the standard.” This is why there are many different video encoders, and some are more efficient than others. “When you define a codec, the only thing really defined by the spec is the syntax of the compressed video stream, and the method to decode it. Tom Vaughan, the Vice President of product management and marketing at MultiCoreWare, developer of the open-source x265 encoder, clarified this. Interestingly, a video coding standard doesn’t define how video is encoded into a file. TV: Why a TV could be your next gaming monitor ![]()
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