HEVC in iOS 11 / macOS 10.13 High Sierra

[Eug]

So, I've been perusing the net and found this post. Some points from that and some of my own:

1. iOS 11 beta already supports HEVC encoding on existing iPhones / iPads.
2. HEVC 4K encoding is limited to iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
3. Supposedly HEVC at lower resolutions is supported on older models.
4. Quality target is about the same, but file size is roughly halved. (Apple states 40% saving.)
5. If you try to AirDrop an HEVC file to an older iPhone on iOS 10, it will convert to h.264 before sending.
6. HEIF is roughly half the size of JPEG too.
7. HEIF files currently do not work on Windows 10 at all.

Also, Final Cut X, Motion, and Compressor are all getting updated to support HEVC later this year, but I don't see any documentation for that anywhere. It's not coming until later this year though, which is probably why it's hard to find stuff on this. Apple states that fast HEVC encoding is coming to the new MacBook Pro and iMac, but does not mention the MacBook:

With HEVC, Apple is enabling high-quality video streaming on networks where only HD streaming was previously possible, while hardware acceleration on the new iMac and MacBook Pro deliver incredibly fast and power-efficient HEVC encoding and editing.

I don't know if they're just not including the MacBook because it's not a pro editing machine or if they plan on excluding the MacBook, but I suspect it is the former. These apps currently all run on the MacBook already, so I would expect them to continue to run on the MacBook, and I do not see a reason not to leverage hardware HEVC encoding on those MacBooks.

I haven't see any mention anywhere about opening up Core Video's HEVC support to developers, but presumably that's coming soon too. Or does the beta already allow this too? Sorry I'm not a developer. I'm just hoping that the media playback software will have easy access to HEVC hardware decode. It would make those apps so much nicer.

 

[JAG87]

Pretty much proves that A8 and on wards had HEVC encode and decode blocks, and it was just turned off because of licensing issues, That's why iPhone 6 launched touting HEVC for FaceTime over cellular calls, and then it was removed. To think that a SOC from 3 years ago can encode HEVC (ok maybe not 4K but still) is just insane, when Qualcomm still can't get basic H264 encoding done right.

If the next iPhones launch at 64GB entry, I guess I can save my money go back to entry level storage now

 

[Eug]

Pretty much proves that A8 and on wards had HEVC encode and decode blocks, and it was just turned off because of licensing issues, That's why iPhone 6 launched touting HEVC for FaceTime over cellular calls, and then it was removed. To think that a SOC from 3 years ago can encode HEVC (ok maybe not 4K but still) is just insane, when Qualcomm still can't get basic H264 encoding done right.

If the next iPhones launch at 64GB entry, I guess I can save my money go back to entry level storage now

That is what I had previously thought, but Apple is supporting HEVC hardware decode only on A9 and up.

http://alex4d.com/notes/item/notes-on-apple-hevc-and-heif-from-wwdc17

I'm disappointed the iPad Air 2 won't have it.

For HEVC encode, only the iPhone 7 / 7 Plus will support it, and only for 8-bit.

 

[Eug]

10-bit / 60 fps / 2160p 4K / HEVC / 76 Mbps playback works perfectly on my 1.2 GHz Core m3 MacBook, using hardware decoding in High Sierra. That was with about 25% CPU utilization.

According to Activity Monitor, WindowServer (which draws the screen) was actually the highest CPU usage at 33% (out of 400%), QT Player was 24%, Activity Monitor was 15%, and VTDecoderXPCService was 10%. Plus kernel task and a few other things in the background added up to another 15%. Total usage under 100% (out of 400%), or overall 25% for the whole dual-core 4-thread CPU. According to Activity Monitor, System CPU usage was 12% and User CPU usage was 13%, with 75% Idle. And of course the MacBook is fanless.

In contrast, I couldn't play that same file cleanly on a 4.2 GHz i7-7700K 8-thread iMac, using software decoding in Sierra. The CPU was hitting over 90C, with the fan on the max of 2700 rpm, with relatively high saturation of all cores.

Thus, I am pleased with Intel's hardware HEVC decoder here, and Apple's QuickTime implementation of it.