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The End of Video Coding?

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Re: The End of Video Coding?

#71

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #37
nine_k wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s DRM. The widevine conf they are using means they are decrypting and decoding in software when you use Chrome or Firefox. When you use Edge you use a different DRM scheme that allows allows decrypting, decoding and rendering in hardware so Netflix offered content upto 4K in Edge with Recent Intel CPU’s. (Last time I checked Ryzen has only just come out with no onboard GPU. But support for recent Nvidia GPU’s was…

No longer able to edit so replying to myself: Taken from another post of mine about widevine 7 months ago where we was discussing why the RaspberryPi couldn't support 1080p Netflix (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594460 and a link to the comment chain to make it easier for anyone reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586844)

> As far as I understand it there are 3 security levels to widevine Level1 being the highest and 3 being the lowest.

> Level 1 is where the decrypt and decode are all done within a trusted execution environment (As far as I understand it Google work with chipset vendors such as broadcom, qualcomm, etc to implement this) and then sent directly to the screen.

> Level 2 is where widevine decrypts the content within the TEE and passes the content back to the application for decoding which could then be decoded with hardware or software.

> Level 3 (I believe) is where widevine decrypts and decodes the content within the lib itself (it can use a hardware cryptographic engine but the rpi doesn't have one).

> Android/ChromeOS support either Level1 or Level3 depending on the hardware and Chrome on desktops only seems to support Level 3. Kodi is using the browser implementation (at least when kodi is not running on Android) of widevine which seems to only support Level 3 (So decrypt & decode in software) and therefore can not support hardware decoding. But that doesn't mean that hardware decoding of widevine protected content can not be supported on any mobile SoC. Sorry if I gave that impression.

> When a license for media is requested the security level it will be decrypted/decoded with is also sent and the returned license will restrict the widevine CDM to that security level.

> I believe NetFlix only support Level 1 and Level 3, which is why for a while the max resolution you could get watching NetFlix on chrome in a desktop browser was 720p as I believe that was the max resolution NetFlix offered at Level 3 and we had to use Edge/IE(iirc) to watch at 1080p as it used a different DRM system (PlayReady) and why atm Desktop 4k Netflix is only currently supported on Edge using (iirc) Intel gen7+ processors and NVidia Pascal GPUs (I don't know if AMD support PlayReady 3.0 on their GPUs as I don't have one so not really had the desire to investigate, I'm guessing that current Ryzen CPUs do not as they currently don't have integrated GPUs).

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#72

Post by earenndil »

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 note that it's possible to watch in 1080p with this addon[1]. 4K it's probably not possible to spoof.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/force-1080p-n...

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#73

Post by maherbeg »

carbonatedmilk wrote: post #3
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…

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?

Netflix also encodes to hundreds of combinations of bit rates and resolutions. If improving the quality for a given bitrate lets them reduce some of the complexity (by shrinking the combinations needed to serve users), then there are pretty nice advantages there.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#75

Post by kolpa »

hcnews wrote: post #69
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 an…

You aren't disagreeing with parent, who said that the 2-3B users don't have HD-capable connections. The parent is saying that the industry should try delivering SD-quality video before hand-waving about near-infinitely compressible HD-video.

For example, one solution for low-bandwidth environments is to edge-cache it (farther toward the real edge than "local ISP") and then spread it locally via peer-to-peer short-distance radio (wifi, bluetooth, local cellular). This is not a 100x data compression challenge; it's a local delivery infrastructure challenge.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#76

Post by TremendousJudge »

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…

They realize, of course. It's not the true reason for DRM, which is squashing competition[1]

[1] https://boingboing.net/2017/09/18/antifeatures-for-all.html

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#77

Post by shawn »

wilun wrote: post #70
shawn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F…

It was a stab at irony.

True, but the video is already subsampled. That's how it was able to be uploaded at 1080p at all, since the source video is 8k. So 8k vs 1080p shouldn't make any difference on monitors less than M-by-1080 resolution.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#78

Post by vetinari »

ksec wrote: post #66
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.

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 l…

Lowering bandwidth requirements not only lowers bandwidth bills, but also opens new markets. You suddenly have subscribers that you otherwise woudn't have. There's a long tail of people with slow connections.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#79

Post by vetinari »

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…

DRM works on multiple fronts, causal piracy is one. The other is the control over player production, what features it will have, who can and who cannot make it, etc. Those who can make good deals, will get an advantage.

Someone above linked a help page that says, that for 4K Netflix you need Edge and Intel Kaby Lake or newer. Do you think that it was free for Microsoft or Intel, or some good deal sweetened that?

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#80

Post by ksec »

hcnews wrote: post #69
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 an…

>Please dig into how many people are actually on HD-capable bandwidths.

I did mention Youtube are doing 1080P at 2.2Mbps. We could be doing 1.2Mbps with HEVC today already. That is HD-capacble bandwidths. And 720P is also HD.

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

There are roughly 5 Billion Phones users world wide, 3.3Billion of users with Smartphone. 1.3 Billion user on LTE, with most of the other 2.3 Billion user do have LTE capable Smartphone but not on LTE plan or their country are on its way to LTE. There are still 600M user in China that does not have Smartphone but could have had LTE should they choose to. India is skipping 3G and moving on to 4G. With 300M Smartphone user and adding even more as we speak. We are expecting to have 2B+ users on 4G or 5G by 2020. With the majority other 1.4B user chooses not to be on LTE rather then inaccessible. And in developing part of the time world, there are little incentive to keep the 3G equipment and spectrum.

I pointed out the we have lots of Network improvement in the pipeline. Purely in terms of technical achievement, arguably speaking Massive MIMO is the biggest invention since wireless communication itself. We will see huge increase in capacity, available for everyone and cheaply. It isn't about first world or third world. US used to have the worst Telecom services, even compared to some third world countries. But Smartphone has changed that because users are willing to pay to get better services. They moves up the ladder, the impact were much more profound in those developing countries. As pointed out by Benedict Evans, there are lot of places where charging the phones cost more that the Data Plan.

I am not saying we shouldn't care about the rest. But a new video codec focussing on 100kbps is wasting energy actually for the few rather then many. By the time this video codec that is done with research and implementation, and hardware available to mobile user, we are talking about a cycle at best 3-4 years, or more likely 6 years+. Network bandwidth would have improved more so.

Another point worth mentioning, the post about Netflix 270Kbps encoding. x264 and x265, were never great at encoding low bitrate. rmvb / Rv10, or Rv9 EHQ from Real Media ( God I am old.... ) has always had better perceived quality at those bitrate. It isn't that we need a new codec aiming at low bitrate, it is that the current encoder are hardly optimise for those bitrate. There is a lot could be done in decoder filter, pre video cleaning to achieve better perceived quality at those bitrate. And RMVB used to do a very good job at it. The new RV11, which is based on HEVC, may have applied those tools as well. ( Not tested RV11 so I am not sure )

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