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The End of Video Coding?

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Re: The End of Video Coding?

#111

Post by voltagex_ »

dingo_bat wrote: post #64
c2h5oh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What source is your torrent from?

A WEB-DL is different from a (1080i) HDTV capture is different from a Blu Ray rip.

Netflix are optimising for bandwidth over quality - hell, the audio still seems to be 96 kbit AAC.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#112

Post by pishpash »

lopmotr wrote: post #81

"new techniques are evaluated against the state-of-the-art codec, for which the coding tools have been refined from decades of investment. It is then easy to drop the new technology as “not at-par.” This seems to be quite a general technology problem that looks like it applies to car engines, batteries, computer memory and any other highly optimized mature technology. I wonder if there's some way to change incentives…

That's what research programs were supposed to do. The problem occurs when research is also evaluated against such specific things as wanted by industry that there's no room for new ideas to be fully funded for the long maturing process.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#113

Post by dingo_bat »

dooglius wrote: post #45
SirHound wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be your ISP is targeting and throttling Netflix? There's probably a way to verify this. I tend to find the quality of HD Netflix streams pretty great over my PS4. Certainly never a cause to download a torrent instead.

You can do a pretty direct test with https://www.netflix.com/title/70136810

That just takes me to the netflix homepage for some reason.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#114

Post by allenz »

da_chicken wrote: post #108
cc-d wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Requiring protocol level DRM to be included in video/music streaming technologies has always baffled me. > What's the point? It's the same reason you put a lock on the door to your house. You know the lock is easily bypassed by tools. The windows are easily broken. The door can probably be easily forced open. But you still lock the door when you leave in the morning. Locks are about keeping casual theives as honest…

> making it just difficult enough to copy that most people will consider it not worth the bother

I don't think that the analogy holds up. The deterrence only applies to uploaders and not consumers, because the processes for removing DRM and distributing videos are independent. It just takes one person to make a video available to the entire world. It does seem like torrents are available for most of the Netflix catalogue, so I'm skeptical that DRM is useful for popular shows.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#115

Post by tatersolid »

haikuginger wrote: post #13
rayiner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is probably at the extreme end. Remember: the same codecs are used to compress the videos your cell phone takes.

Hardware implementations of codecs can be made that perform encode at low power if a certain level of quality/efficiency can be given up. This is already the case for AVC/HEVC on mobile devices where storage and power considerations overwhelm the possible quality and coding efficiency advances that could be available from a highly-intensive, highly-tunable CPU-based encode. In comparison, if you look at digital cinem…

The very popular RED digital cinema cameras have always shot in compressed form using a low-latency wavelet-based codec (presumably with some ASIC or GPU acceleration on board).

http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/redcode-file-format

http://www.theblackandblue.com/2012/05/02/shooting-red-epic-...

What cameras shoot uncompressed 8K HDR video? That doesn’t even seem possible given current SSD bus speeds. Note that many high-quality lossless formats are actually still compressed (they subtract current frame data from the previous frame and then apply LZ4 for example).

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#116

Post by brigade »

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

Even ignoring chroma, video compressed at streaming bitrates is nowhere near the nyquist limit for a given resolution.

In addition, YouTube generally encodes 4k at like 5-6x the bitrate of their 1080p encodes (codec for codec), rather than merely 3-4x higher which would be closer to the same quality per pixel.

So yeah, YouTube's 4k is better on a 1080p screen than their 1080p stream.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#117

Post by jadedhacker »

derf_ wrote: post #51
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.

There are a couple of things that make Netflix somewhat unique. 1) They have a fairly limited catalog (contrast with the constant ingestion of new content by Youtube, for example) 2) The cheapest way for them to ensure they have sufficient capacity to handle peak loads leaves them with a lot of extra compute during non-peak times. That excess compute is essentially free.

For what it's worth, I don't know what YouTube's actual constraints look like, but it doesn't seem implausible that they might still be open to reencoding their top 10k video. After a billion views, you might get some substantial savings.

EDIT: After all, they did implement VP8/9 ;)

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#118

Post by cc-d »

izacus wrote: post #68
cc-d wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had always considered this the most likely explanation.

The tendency for humans to implement elaborate but ineffective security theaters in an attempt to convince people they're protected from fundamentally unprotectable threats is as old as society itself.

As a consequence, chrome can't watch netflix videos at full quality, anybody who flys in the US has to remove their shoes, and my child has to wear a clear backpack to school. I wish we'd stop playing these silly games of pretend which degrade the quality of life of everyone.

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#119

Post by izacus »

allenz wrote: post #114
da_chicken wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requiring protocol level DRM to be included in video/music streaming technologies has always baffled me. > What's the point? It's the same reason you put a lock on the door to your house. You know the lock is easily bypassed by tools. The windows are easily broken. The door can probably be easily forced open. But you still lock the door when you leave in the morning. Locks are about keeping casual theives as honest…

> making it just difficult enough to copy that most people will consider it not worth the bother I don't think that the analogy holds up. The deterrence only applies to uploaders and not consumers, because the processes for removing DRM and distributing videos are independent. It just takes one person to make a video available to the entire world. It does seem like torrents are available for most of the Netflix catal…

The analogy is good, but the reasoning is a bit off. Let me fix it - You still lock your door in the morning because you know that your insurance company will not pay out your theft insurance if anything gets stolen. DRM is mandated all the way up the chain (and noone really cares if it works).

Re: The End of Video Coding?

#120

Post by izacus »

isostatic wrote: post #85
izacus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do netflix limit their own shows?

Yes, they apply full DRM to their own content as well.
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