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The End of Video Coding?

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Re: The End of Video Coding?

#61

Post by alephnil »

martincmartin wrote: post #44
lostcolony wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still care, since at some point the cost of the extra encoder-hours used is going to outpace the bandwidth savings. I'm guessing she mentally assumed 'at no bandwidth savings, how much margin do we have?', since the amount saved wasn't ever quantified.

It's not bandwidth savings. It's growing the user base. There are lots of people on low bandwidth connections. Maybe now they don't find Netflix watchable, because the video quality is to crappy. But if you can fit higher quality video into the same bandwidth, they'd become users. I agree with your overall point though, that at some point the extra cost for encode isn't worth it.

Netflix is in fact working very hard to optimize the quality per bandwidth at low bitrates. Megha Manohara from Netflix had a conference talk about it last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9E9xUbcYAM

Their goal is to have video of acceptable quality at 250 kbit/s, which makes Netflix an option for a lot more people worldwide.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#62

Post by jascenso »

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…

Note that they are speaking about encoding complexity. The point is that decoder complexity increases are also needed (although, not as much !) and every time that encoder complexity has increased in the past, decoder complexity also grew.

The really interesting question is how much decoder complexity increase is acceptable.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#63

Post by 8xde0wcNwpslOw »

c2h5oh wrote: post #46
8xde0wcNwpslOw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be a lot worse than 720p. At least for me, most bigger (not netflix-original) titles are limited to 480p with maximum bitrates even below 1000 kbps when using a "partially" supported browser like Chrome. But even using Edge is not a silver bullet for all content, as some seems to be limited to that low bitrate 480p on all browsers, even if higher quality is available on a TV app.

Control+Alt+Shift+S and override bitrate used.

Yes, I'm using that to see what bitrates are available. For the mentioned content, they range from very low to low (up to around 1000 kbps).

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#64

Post by dingo_bat »

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

Even then, 720p from a torrent looks much better that what I get from Netflix. And I've tried Chrome, edge and even the win10 UWP app.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#65

Post by Latty »

dingo_bat wrote: post #56
izacus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but YouTube doesn't require full DRM support.

But why should I, as a viewer, care about that?

The answer is probably "because your content is locked on that provider", but that's a less and less valuable point.

Obviously, BitTorrent was the big reason in the past, but now the reality is that there is a lot of competition in the video space - you aren't just competing with films and tv shows, but youtube videos, twitch streams, etc...

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#66

Post by ksec »

lostcolony wrote: post #6
carbonatedmilk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes entire sense to me: When you're going to stream the episode of Stranger things to 15million people, who really cares what the one-time cost to encode is? Surely you'd take algorithmic complexity that was 100x or even 1000x the baseline if it provided you with even a few kB of bandwidth savings?

You still care, since at some point the cost of the extra encoder-hours used is going to outpace the bandwidth savings. I'm guessing she mentally assumed 'at no bandwidth savings, how much margin do we have?', since the amount saved wasn't ever quantified.

Exactly this. I don't know how many times this need to be repeated. If your original encoding cost were 1 Million, 5x or even 10x is only 9 million more. At 100x that is 99 million. 1000x is a billion. Are you really willing to spend a billion on a codec that saves you 50% transfer and a fee million of royalty cost?

Especially when Netflix already has the Open Alliance in many ISP DC. Bandwidth cost saving are much less that most estimate.

However I do understand her point, she should ask I give you 100x complexity headroom, can you get me 80% reduction in bitrate compare to HEVC.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#67

Post by izacus »

dingo_bat wrote: post #56
izacus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but YouTube doesn't require full DRM support.

But why should I, as a viewer, care about that?

Because content providers are making you care about that. They _demand_ that you're prevented from seeing high quality TV if your platform doesn't fully lock you out.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#68

Post by izacus »

cc-d wrote: post #52
izacus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but YouTube doesn't require full DRM support.

Requiring protocol level DRM to be included in video/music streaming technologies has always baffled me. What's the point? Even with theoretically perfect protocol level DRM, the consumer eventually has to be able to see/hear the protected content. If the frames of the video are displayed on screen, and the audio played through the speakers, the output can be recorded and preserved, period. Do the people in charge of…

After working in the broadcasting industry for a few years... the answer is that the management of companies in the chain simply doesn't care. DRM absolves them of any kind of piracy blame and they happily pile blame around on people who push back on DRM. That's about it to the story - actual results never come into the reasoning.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#69

Post by hcnews »

ksec wrote: post #53

>To address the disconnect between researchers in academia and standardization and the industry users of video coding technology, This annoys me quite a bit. Because then it list out the so called large-scale video encoding from Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. As if Video Encoding are only done by OTT providers. And the Video Encode from iPhone ( Consumers ) TV broadcast ( the good old content distributor ), livestre…

In most of your reply you have failed to account for the third world (and frankly a decent chunk of first world). It seems to me you don't have an understanding of your user base. Please dig into how many people are actually on HD-capable bandwidths.

I am glad that Silicon Valley is driving it since they have users all over the world, not just fiber-enabled users. If and when other people have a better aim, vision and understanding of the problem, I think you should find a good collaborative atmosphere.

In the meantime, let's not design for 100m users when we should be thinking about 2-3b users.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#70

Post by wilun »

shawn wrote: post #38
CyberDildonics wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually watch 8k video off of youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn24cQLqAE4

Wow! Even at my monitor's 1024x768, the 8k video looks amazing! So much better than 1080p! Something something nyquist something

I'm not 100% sure if you tried to be ironic or if you really reported that the video was better in 8k than FHD.

Because actually, it can be.

Although 8k is overkill, 4k will be enough, and 1440p nearly ok on your old 1024x768 monitor. Typically video encoding does some subsampling on some color components. If you play 4k content on a FHD screen, the quality can be better because you will have no subsampling on your FHD screen, compared to mere FHD encoding (in most cases).

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