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Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#101

Post by MobiusHorizons »

Razengan wrote: post #84
akersten wrote: post #40

Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms data into A/V content. Never to mention the two blatant issues with this, being: 1) video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is 2) a process being "essential" to a…

> video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is Most software is literally all math.

IMO the real issues caused by patent encumbered formats is that what is patented is not the software itself, but the format. So instead of patenting a specific implementation of an encoder or a decoder, what is patented here is the relationship between the bits on disk and the pixels on the screen. I think that's what the quoted text is trying to get at.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#102

Post by SemanticStrengh »

throwaway67743 wrote: post #7

The other problem is like competing codecs (vpx comes to mind), they all require much more resources for little gain, both for encoding and decoding - even in hardware vp9 requires more than h264 (and 5), patents are not the only reason. Also with a million competing codecs which do you choose....

I have not seen evidence that hardware accelerates h265 decoding consume that much more energy. Generally the complexity increase is biased toward the encoder

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#103

Post by t-3 »

alex_smart wrote: post #96
FabHK wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insofar as GP seems to be against software patents in general, it is not an argument against his position, is it?

It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is). Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting. I…

The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#104

Post by scottlamb »

The frustrating thing IMHO is that IP security cameras support H.264 and H.265, while browsers support H.264 and VP9/AV1. It's good that they have one codec in common, but I'd prefer they share a modern one.

I think much of it is geopolitical. Browser vendors are mostly in the West, can't just ignore the patents, and don't want to pay for the patents. Camera and chipset makers are mostly in China and simply ignore patents and licensing. (They don't honor LGPL/GPL conditions either.)

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#105

Post by jolux »

t-3 wrote: post #103
alex_smart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is). Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting. I…

The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.

What does “the representation is abstract to the utility” mean? I mean, music isn’t patentable, but it is thoroughly copyrighted.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#106

Post by grishka »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over. If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P... [1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

I've yet to see any hardware decoder supporting AV1. And while you can decode with software, at the cost of using obscene amounts of CPU cycles for extended periods of time which not all devices are designed to sustain, forget about software encoding. Encoding is just not going to happen without a hardware accelerator.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#107

Post by ac29 »

scottlamb wrote: post #104

The frustrating thing IMHO is that IP security cameras support H.264 and H.265, while browsers support H.264 and VP9/AV1. It's good that they have one codec in common, but I'd prefer they share a modern one. I think much of it is geopolitical. Browser vendors are mostly in the West, can't just ignore the patents, and don't want to pay for the patents. Camera and chipset makers are mostly in China and simply ignore pa…

Give it time. HEVC hardware support was available before AV1 hardware support. I think thats the only reason - realtime encoding of these modern codecs necessitates hardware support on a device like a security camera.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#108

Post by alex_smart »

t-3 wrote: post #103
alex_smart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is). Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting. I…

The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.

Software is also, in fact, not math. Nor is the math the utility of software. Software's utility (usually) is the business problems it solves. The processes are encoded as math, and a lot of writing software is about improving those processes, but that is not in fact the utility.

Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#109

Post by GekkePrutser »

akersten wrote: post #40

Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms data into A/V content. Never to mention the two blatant issues with this, being: 1) video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is 2) a process being "essential" to a…

That doesn't explain why the browsers don't offer hardware decoding but only software decoding. Both implement the same specification. One is just faster (and in hardware which I assume has said license fees paid by the processor manufacturer).

In fact looking at it this way it would be easier to implement it in hardware as you don't just offload the decoding but the whole licensing rigmarole too.

Edit: oops this was already mentioned. Sorry the thread is so long I lost the overview.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#110

Post by dogma1138 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #82
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, is a video codec really just "math"? There's a binary payload description and algorithms involved for applying said math as well. I'm no expert in the field, so I'm actually asking in good faith here...

If you’re against patents, yes. If you’re gainfully employed doing math things that turn into codecs, no. Patents suck, but they also serve a purpose.

I’m not sure why is this being downvoted…

A patent for a drug is just chemistry, which is also just math with a specific ruleset…

Patents are designed to protect work, especially work where most of the effort is in the research / discovery rather than the implementation.

Implementing a video decoder is relatively easy coming up with the algorithms to encode/decode the video efficiently and effectively however is a lot of work.

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