anyone know anything about HEVC encoding?

[tommo123]

looking to check my settings and see if i can improve

 

[Red Squirrel]

The only thing I know about it is that I can't open it. Ran into it a few times but just downloaded in another format and was good to go. I'm guessing it's a new format?

 

[Eug]

The only thing I know about it is that I can't open it. Ran into it a few times but just downloaded in another format and was good to go. I'm guessing it's a new format?

h.265 HEVC has been an official standard since 2013. It is the successor to h.264 AVC. It also what it is used in 4K UHD Blu-ray and 4K Netflix, since it's about 30-50% more efficient than h.264 AVC. Also, Apple has added native support HEVC OS wide in both iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra, both of which launch this fall.

Furthermore, a lot CELL PHONES have built-in HEVC decode and even encode support in hardware. When you record 4K video on a cell phone, it is often in HEVC. Kaby Lake also has full decode and encode for h.265 HEVC in hardware, but software decode is supported on even old CPUs (although it's a lot more CPU intensive than h.264 AVC.

 

[tommo123]

yea, been around for a while. I encode my own things into x265 but while I knew my way around x264/megui I'm using staxrip with x265. megui has no advanced settings so I can't compare (even though same/similar terms would change from 1 to the next anyway).

I read it's twice as efficient as AVC

anyhoo. my settings for 1080p: 1:1 for anime and -2:-2 for older stuff with grain. for something about an hour I use the below. bitrate adjusted for length. longer it is, the lower it can go

x265.exe --pass 2 --bitrate 1100 --output-depth 10 --rd 5 --max-tu-size 16 --tu-intra-depth 3 --tu-inter-depth 3 --rdoq-level 2 --amp --b-intra --aq-mode 3 --aq-strength 1.8 --qcomp 0.8 --subme 5 --me star --merange 22 --max-merge 5 --weightb --bframes 8 --rc-lookahead 30 --lookahead-slices 4 --ref 5 --deblock -1:-1 --psy-rdoq 10 --y4m

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Use Handbrake for your encoding and play with bitrates to find the sweet spot. It's a lot more efficient than h.264, so at a similar file size you're going to get noticeably better video quality. Do a couple of tests on a 2 minute segment before starting in earnest. HEVC encoding is a slow process, so get an idea of how the setting impact the quality of the finished product before encoding a full length video.

 

[tommo123]

i've been doing it for over a year but just seeing if others here use it and if so, what seeings do they use.

2 mins though isn't enough since if you use that same bitrate for 2 hours you'll be wasting bitrate. there'll be more slow scenes to spread out a lower bitrate over IMO.

 

[Eug]

I read it's twice as efficient as AVC

Apple has been saying it saves about 40% space, but other stuff I've read lists 30%-50%, although usually closer to the 30% than the 50%.

However, it should be noted that Apple's numbers refer to 1080p video. I've read that most people don't try to compare against h.264 for 4K, but h.264 was never a good choice for 4K in the first place.

BTW Red Squirrel, it should be noted that Apple is switching to the HEIF image format for photos as of fall of this year, for any recent iPhone running iOS 11. HEIF uses HEVC encoding to create the images. So as of this fall, there will be a bazillion iPhones spitting HEIF images (as .heif files). This is gonna wreak havoc on image sharing sites methinks. I betcha they're all scrambling now to get HEIF image compatibility in place before iOS 11 hits the airwaves. Why switch to HEIF? Because it uses about half the space as JPEG for the same quality.

I've talked about Apple a lot here, but it should also be noted that the Samsung S8 Android phone also supports HEVC.

So, while HEVC isn't exactly an old format, there is going to be a LOT of HEVC-based media out there in very short order. And as mentioned, Netflix 4K and 4K UHD Blu-ray is already HEVC. In addition, Amazon Prime uses HEVC not just for 4K, but for their other resolutions as well.

It's for this reason I did not buy into Broadwell or Skylake for new computers. Broadwell is essentially crippled when it comes to hardware HEVC support, and Skylake has a bit of a lame limb. Full support didn't come until Kaby Lake, which is why I've waited so long to buy new machines. Last week, I ordered both a Kaby Lake Core m3 7Y32 laptop, and a Kaby Lake Core i7 7700K desktop. See below for an example as to why:

 

[darkswordsman17]

I think I did some when I ripped some TV show Blu-ray. It was just taking way too long.

Interesting about the new Apple image format. Isn't there some other new one that I think Google was pushing that offers similar? Which I think Google has VP9 or whatever that might be better than HEVC, and was practically needed as it looked like HEVC was maybe going to start pushing for license fees, which would have hampered support.

 

[tynopik]

It's for this reason I did not buy into Broadwell or Skylake for new computers.
. . .
Last week, I ordered both a Kaby Lake Core m3 7Y32 laptop, and a Kaby Lake Core i7 7700K desktop.

you're using internal graphics on your desktop?

 

[Eug]

Interesting about the new Apple image format. Isn't there some other new one that I think Google was pushing that offers similar? Which I think Google has VP9 or whatever that might be better than HEVC, and was practically needed as it looked like HEVC was maybe going to start pushing for license fees, which would have hampered support.

VP9 is in between h.264 and h.265. More efficient than h.264 but less efficient than h.265. It's also royalty-free, which is its main advantage.

The one that is supposed to compete against h.265 is AV1, but that's not out yet. AV1 is also royalty-free.

People were wondering what was going to happen with HEVC h.265 because their royalties are too high and it's a mess with more than one patent pool. However, now that Apple has gone whole hawg into native HEVC support across both iOS and macOS, that's given a big psychological boost to the HEVC camp.

As for HEIF, it's not an Apple image format. It's an MPEG format. The weird part is I think there are royalties on that too, so I wonder what that will mean for 3rd party hosting sites, etc. I don't understand these complexities with royalties.

you're using internal graphics on your desktop?

No, but it's often safer to make sure your CPU supports everything.

Case in point: Despite PlayReady 3.0 being supported by some GPUs, Netflix only supports 4K output on Kaby Lake machines, regardless of what GPUs they run. That may change this year, but no guarantees.

Also, my desktop is a Mac. Apple has chosen to support hardware HEVC 10-bit decode on only Kaby Lake and later machines, regardless of the GPU used.

I didn't know that ahead of time, as that was just announced this month, but nonetheless, I made the choice to skip Skylake, and am very glad I did.

 

[IronWing]

Intel is confusing the heck out of me on this. Kaby Lake is supposed to be the newer architecture, with hardware support for HEVC. Now Intel rolls out the Skylake-X series which is, in theory, a faster implementation of an older architecture without hardware support for HEVC but the review on the AnandTech front page shows the new Skylake-X blowing Kaby Lake out of the water on video transcoding (at a premium cost, of course).

 

[Eug]

Intel is confusing the heck out of me on this. Kaby Lake is supposed to be the newer architecture, with hardware support for HEVC. Now Intel rolls out the Skylake-X series which is, in theory, a faster implementation of an older architecture without hardware support for HEVC but the review on the AnandTech front page shows the new Skylake-X blowing Kaby Lake out of the water on video transcoding (at a premium cost, of course).

I would assume that's a software encoding benchmark, so the hardware encoding feature would be irrelevant. Do you have the link?

P.S. This was posted by my Kaby Lake MacBook. I am still trying to figure out how to play hardware accelerated HEVC on it without resorting to installing the 10.13 High Sierra beta (which I'm told is really, really buggy right now).

Also, Chrome on the Mac doesn't accelerate VP9 either as far as I can tell, despite the fact my CPU is Kaby Lake. If I happen to visit a 4K YouTube link and play it in 2160p, it may stutter on this Core m3 machine. 1440p will play fine, but CPU usage is high. The save the battery the solution really is just to stick with Safari which only gets h.264 up to 1440p and that is fully hardware accelerated. Or on Chrome you can install an extension to force h.264. Again, it maxes out at 1440p (instead of 2160p) but that's good actually since the MacBook has a 1440p screen.

 

[rh71]

Nvm

 

[IronWing]

The comparison is in the graphs in AnandTech's review of the new Skylake series.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11550...ew-core-i9-7900x-i7-7820x-and-i7-7800x-tested