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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?

#161

Post by _carbyau_ »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #146
_carbyau_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That symbolic dollar causes so much overhead though. Who tracks who has bought or not bought it? Should users/software devs/hardware makers pay? For potentially billions of users/software copies/devices across many national jurisdictions. I click the x265 video link. And now the browser/OS/hardware have to do a dance to determine if I am allowed to watch the video or not. Or because that is a big hassle, don't bother…

I've seen bigger dances.. https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/extensions-vid%C3%A9...

Ha! That doesn't apply to Mac, Linux, iOS, Android. Which the browsers support and consist of far more devices.

Relying on every user to honorably-do-the-right-thing AND every OS/browser/video software to coordinate to make it happen is foolish. Nice in an ideal world, doesn't work in practice.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for the maker of the codec getting some monetary reward for their clever work. But this is a dumb way to do it.

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

#162

Post by gyan »

jasode wrote: post #31
tomputer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFmpeg and VLC seem to use (lib)x265 for H.265 content. Is a license also required if the x265 codec is used? Or does that depend on whether the software is for commercial use?

>FFmpeg and VLC seem to use (lib)x265 for H.265 content. copypaste of previous comment: The FFmpeg project does not distribute binaries with unlicensed or illegal code. E.g. if you want ffmpeg to use libdvdcss for decrypting DVDs or use libfdk-aac to encode aac/m4a without paying license royalties to Fraunhofer, the end user has to download those components and build a custom ffmpeg binary on their own . No legitimat…

> When the popular Zeranoe website hosted ffmpeg executables for download, it was only built with the free GNU components and was missing x265

Not the case. See https://web.archive.org/web/20200916062932mp_/https://ffmpeg...

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

#163

Post by anaisbetts »

dopa42365 wrote: post #127
anaisbetts wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is the case. Current Edge Dev (102.0.1245.3) reports "No" for HEVC, even with the extension installed. Old Edge based on EdgeHTML/Spartan would indeed play HEVC content

Drop some local h265 mp4s into your edge browser, works fine for me with the extension.

I don't know what to tell you, it doesn't work with the Video tag which is what matters

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

#164

Post by nceqs3 »

yarg wrote: post #119
nceqs3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country in the world "endorses" the concept of "essential" patents. It's called a patent.

No. A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things. Essential patents in general fail the obviousness test; they cover the solution that most experts in the field would reach in solving the given problem.

> A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. An essential patent is declared essential to a standard (of which there are many). Take 3GPP, companies like Qualcomm, Apple, Ericsson, Huawei, etc. all spend hundreds of million of $ developing each release of the 3GPP cellular standard. During this development process often times patents are filed (based on the companies contributions). As part of joining 3GPP you have to agree to license this IP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents are almost never obvious, as you can see from the lengthy debate over each feature and all of the associated proposals at each 3GPP meeting.

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

#165

Post by throwaway67743 »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #102
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

Not 265. its almost as simple as 264, but vpx (and their new fangled one which is even worse) - sorry if it wasn't clear from my comment

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

#166

Post by ksec »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #156
ksec wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there was no limit to how much you could spend on licensing every year. Both MPEG-LA and HEVC Advance offer Max Cap per year.

MPEG LA had a cap, Access Advance (formerly known as HEVC Advance) now has a cap though I do not believe there was a cap originally. However, my statement is still correct because to use HEVC you need to also talk to Velos Media (pricing and terms not public), and you also need to contact several individual companies not in pools like Technicolor (who also do not have their pricing and terms public). EDIT: HEVC / Acc…

>If you don't put their logo on your products, no caps.

New HEVC-Only Platform License - Royalty Rate Structure for Licensees In-Compliance without Trademark Discount has Caps. And the Standard Structure for HEVC Licensees with no caps are there for specific uses only under trademark dispute.

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

#167

Post by silicon2401 »

paulmd wrote: post #35
silicon2401 wrote: post #24

Can someone help me understand why my windows 10 laptop with the latest VLC can't run x265 video files, but my windows 10 desktop with the latest VLC can? My desktop definitely runs circles around my laptop, but I'm not very well versed on video tech, so I haven't been able to figure out what the issue is on my laptop.

FYI (not just you but generally): one tool that is very useful in this situation is called "DXVA Checker", it checks the DirectX video acceleration modules that are available for the current hardware/driver and then you can compare that against the file ("codec information" in VLC) and see what's going on. I would hazard a guess that your laptop probably doesn't have a hardware H265, or that the H265 file you're usin…

Thanks very much. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a hardware shortcoming; my laptop is from 2015/2016, I just never really notice because I only use it for the most barebones needs (I hate using laptops). You're probably right, so I'll check out that tool and see what I learn. thanks!

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

#168

Post by SemanticStrengh »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #161
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen bigger dances.. https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/extensions-vid%C3%A9...

Ha! That doesn't apply to Mac, Linux, iOS, Android. Which the browsers support and consist of far more devices. Relying on every user to honorably-do-the-right-thing AND every OS/browser/video software to coordinate to make it happen is foolish. Nice in an ideal world, doesn't work in practice. Don't get me wrong. I am all for the maker of the codec getting some monetary reward for their clever work. But this is a du…

Nono it's much simpler than that. The code (e.g shipping x265 decoder) is open-source and cross platform. You don't have to pay multiple time per O.S, the browser should be the (optional) source of the payment hence it can author every user is legal. Why can Firefox use h264 currently for free? Because Cisco pay for everyone. It's a small amount that would cost nothing (anyone could crowdfund it). H265 was shipped for free on Microsoft edge pre chromium. I suppose Microsoft paid for everybody and the real cost is less than 1 dollar per user. The browser could sync the license validity either via an account (e.g Google) which is already synchronised to the browser anyway, or via the sync mechanisms that already enable to sync history/favorites between OSes But yeah doing like Cisco, Microsoft and Apple (every safari support h265) is the easy way, it doesn't cost them more than a few millions, which is usually allocated in vaporware anyways (fuschia I'm looking at you)

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

#169

Post by zhusidayoyo »

We have finish the development of chromium hevc hardware decoding support on macOS/Windows this month, not sure when will this feature be embedded into chrome, but you can atleast try this link to download the prebuilt version: https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-deco...

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

#170

Post by Sunspark »

dopa42365 wrote: post #125
Sunspark wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that the browser supports AC-3 but the MS video player does not unless you pay for the codec, while all the other video players include it. Going with AV1 is not an option for the vast majority of people as it requires hardware support. If you try using AV1 on a computer that didn't come with a hardware decoder for it, your machine will crawl. I force h264 in YouTube for this reason instead of using VP9.

You can easily watch 4k AV1 videos on any recent 6+ cores CPU. So, not an issue unless you're using hardware from 2015 or so? In which case you're unlikely watching a ton of 4k+ content anyway.

I'm still using a Broadwell CPU. 2 cores. It works perfectly fine. I don't use the computer for gaming and do try whenever possible to do so to use h.264 which is fully hardware accelerated.

The machine does not feel slow to me. I have a fast SSD in it and lots of RAM so it is actually quite responsive. It just can't handle certain things like AV1.

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