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The End of Video Coding?

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Re: The End of Video Coding?

#21

Post by c2h5oh »

dingo_bat wrote: post #4

It seems to me that despite the tech, Netflix video quality is really horrible. Youtube is consistently much higher quality, even though Netflix's own "fast.com" tells me my connection is capable of 75Mbps downstream. Which should be enough for crisp 1080p. Multiple times I've been so frustrated with Netflix's quality that I've started a movie, stopped it because it looked like something out of a VCR, torrented the t…

Most likely you're watching in 720p.

In Chrome, Firefox and Opera you're getting 720p max.

To get 1080p you need to be watching in Internet Explorer, Safari or on a Chromebook.

To get 4k you need to be watching in Edge and have a 7xxx or 8xxx Intel CPU and HDCP 2.2 enabled display.

Source: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#22

Post by Slartie »

Twirrim wrote: post #20
rayiner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but designing a codec that is scalable in complexity to accommodate real-time hardware encoding on one end, and 100x Netflix encoding on the other end probably isn't easy.

Why does it have to be the same codec? Use the right tool for the job.

The encoding part may well differ, but having the same bitstream format and thus being able to use the same decoders for a very wide range of efficiency/time trade-offs has huge advantages. The necessity of using hardware implementations of video decoders in many scenarios requires a big initial investment into a new codecs' decoding part before even the first frame of video may be displayed by it.

This is why pretty much anyone has standardized on h264, and now on h265, as the video codec of choice, despite using very different encoder software or hardware to realize hugely differing trade-offs on the encoding side of things.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#23

Post by haikuginger »

lightbyte wrote: post #18
gempir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be you are using an incompatible Browser? E.g. Chrome on Windows works not very good the native Netflix windows app delivers a way better quality

Isn't that because Chrome refuses to add the DRM netflix needs for 1080p content? (I believe it was silverlight)

I think it's much more arbitrary. Silverlight is on life support with support for EME/HTML5 video on most platforms, but Netflix has historically chosen to only support 1080p video on the first-party browser for any given OS (Chrome on ChromeOS, Safari on macOS, and IE/Edge on Windows).

EDIT: Looking at some stuff, it seems like Netflix might "trust" a first-party browser to select the highest-quality stream that it has hardware video decode support for. In comparison, it sounds like there are extensions that enable 1080p in Chrome by pushing it into the list of playlist options, but it can cause a serious performance hit by decoding on the CPU.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#24

Post by kylophone »

shmerl wrote: post #15
cjensen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no shortage of new ideas for video encoding. The post is welcoming both new ideas and encouraging more new ideas rather than being any kind of summary of current tech.

I guess there might be no shortage in general, but there are few which are publicly developed with the aim to make free codecs. Which other efforts are there besides Daala?

AV1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#25

Post by shmerl »

kylophone wrote: post #24
shmerl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there might be no shortage in general, but there are few which are publicly developed with the aim to make free codecs. Which other efforts are there besides Daala?

AV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1

It's still block based. I was talking about new approaches which the blog post is referencing.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#26

Post by cpeterso »

wink wrote: post #19
gempir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be you are using an incompatible Browser? E.g. Chrome on Windows works not very good the native Netflix windows app delivers a way better quality

TIL there's a Windows app, I'll try that out as well, thank you. FWIW I haven't noticed huge differences on Chrome and Firefox on Win10, I usually blamed the wifi for bad quality though.

Chrome and Firefox use the same DRM (Google Widevine), so they receive the same 720p video from Netflix. Edge and Safari get 1080p because the use hardware-based DRM (Microsoft PlayReady and Apple FairPlay, respectively).

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#27

Post by shawn »

c2h5oh wrote: post #21
dingo_bat wrote: post #4

It seems to me that despite the tech, Netflix video quality is really horrible. Youtube is consistently much higher quality, even though Netflix's own "fast.com" tells me my connection is capable of 75Mbps downstream. Which should be enough for crisp 1080p. Multiple times I've been so frustrated with Netflix's quality that I've started a movie, stopped it because it looked like something out of a VCR, torrented the t…

Most likely you're watching in 720p. In Chrome, Firefox and Opera you're getting 720p max. To get 1080p you need to be watching in Internet Explorer, Safari or on a Chromebook. To get 4k you need to be watching in Edge and have a 7xxx or 8xxx Intel CPU and HDCP 2.2 enabled display. Source: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

If that’s true, that’s pretty unfortunate. YouTube does 1440p@60fps now.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#28

Post by nine_k »

carbonatedmilk wrote: post #2

Pull quote: We run compute on the cloud and have no real-time requirements. I was asked by the Chair, “How much complexity increase is acceptable?” I was not prepared for the question, so did some quick math in my mind estimating an upper bound and said “At the worst case 100X.” The room of about a hundred video standardization experts burst out laughing. I looked at the Chair perplexed, and he says, “Don’t worry the…

Suddenly they're in the same space as 3D-rendered movies: they can spend a lot of time once to make the result good for a million of spectators.

It, of course, only works if you render widely replicated material. Even an average Youtube video is likely not like that, to say nothing of the encoding done in a consumer-grade camera / phone.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#29

Post by nine_k »

c2h5oh wrote: post #21
dingo_bat wrote: post #4

It seems to me that despite the tech, Netflix video quality is really horrible. Youtube is consistently much higher quality, even though Netflix's own "fast.com" tells me my connection is capable of 75Mbps downstream. Which should be enough for crisp 1080p. Multiple times I've been so frustrated with Netflix's quality that I've started a movie, stopped it because it looked like something out of a VCR, torrented the t…

Most likely you're watching in 720p. In Chrome, Firefox and Opera you're getting 720p max. To get 1080p you need to be watching in Internet Explorer, Safari or on a Chromebook. To get 4k you need to be watching in Edge and have a 7xxx or 8xxx Intel CPU and HDCP 2.2 enabled display. Source: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Do they offer any reasons to these limitations?

In particular, is it due to DRM requirements, or pure performance? I suspect it's the former.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#30

Post by lev99 »

nine_k wrote: post #28
carbonatedmilk wrote: post #2

Pull quote: We run compute on the cloud and have no real-time requirements. I was asked by the Chair, “How much complexity increase is acceptable?” I was not prepared for the question, so did some quick math in my mind estimating an upper bound and said “At the worst case 100X.” The room of about a hundred video standardization experts burst out laughing. I looked at the Chair perplexed, and he says, “Don’t worry the…

Suddenly they're in the same space as 3D-rendered movies: they can spend a lot of time once to make the result good for a million of spectators. It, of course, only works if you render widely replicated material. Even an average Youtube video is likely not like that, to say nothing of the encoding done in a consumer-grade camera / phone.

> encoding done in a consumer-grade camera / phone.

Just brainstorming here, but encoding local photos/videos might be an acceptable task for a cellphone to do when it is fully charged and plugged in.

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