H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC) • Hacker News Board

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#321

Post by fwip » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

pedrovhb wrote: post #126

sp332 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about H.266, but some of the advances in H.265 depended on players having enough RAM to hold a bunch of previous decoded frames, so they could be referred to by later compressed data. Newer codecs tend to have a lot more options for the encoder to tune, so they need a combination of faster CPUs and smarter heuristics to explore the space of possible encodings quickly.

I wonder if instead of heuristics, machine learning could be used to figure out the best parameters.

Sure. Machine Learning is just "heuristics we don't understand."

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#322

Post by AdrianB1 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #230

AdrianB1 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Patent Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation ( https://www.epo.org/about-us/foundation.html ). Not a private organization.

Alright, I was wrong. Still strange that they issue patents that are obviously invalid.

I know quite well a patent examiner there; there is a lot of politics and incompetence in appointing people and a lot of pressure to accept most of the patents they receive, if I understood correctly part of the reason is politics (if you refuse, even stupid patents, influential people will get upset) and part is the idea to have as many patents as possible as a measure of European creativity and innovation and ... bla-bla. Universities and research institutes are measured by the number of patents and if they don't invent something good, they will patent something stupid just to get the numbers right.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#323

Post by linuxftw » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #309

linuxftw wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I read the release was that it's not a lossless compression, it reads like it's downscaling 4k+ video to a lower format with 'no perceptible loss of quality.' Since this is also seemingly targeted at mobile, I'm guessing the lack of perceptible loss of quality is a direct function of screen size and pixel density on a smaller mobile devices. For me, this is another pointless advance in video technology. 720p…

> 720p or 1080p is fantastic video resolution, especially on a mobile phone. 720p is far from fantastic. It's noticeably blurry, even on mobile. 1080p is minimally acceptable, and is now over 10 years old. > Less than 1% of the population cares or wants higher resolution. That's a very bold claim. Have any studies or polls to back that up?

> That's a very bold claim. Have any studies or polls to back that up?

From 1:

> In Japan, only 14 percent of households will own a 4K TV in 2019 because most households already have relatively new TVs, IHS said.

Let's dissect the reasoning. Most households already have a relatively new TV, thus a low adoption rate. Implying that needing a new TV generally, not the desire to upgrade resolution, is the primary motivating factor in purchasing a TV. In fact, most 4K TVs are already as cheap as the rest of the market.

I truly believe that almost everyone does not care about 4K whatsoever. In fact, even if they do 'care' it's not because they know what they're talking about. Most of the enhancements that 4K TVs bring are an artifact of better display technology, rather than increased resolution. See 2.

Streaming 4K+ video is a waste of resources with no tangible benefit to anyone other than marketing purposes. Netflix streams '4K' because everyone has a '4K' TV now and they demand it.

[1]: https://www.twice.com/research/us-4k-tv-penetration-hit-35-2...

[2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/why-ultra-hd-4k-tvs-are-still-stup...

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#324

Post by awill » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

MikusR wrote: post #49

otterley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the market is more than happy to pay a few cents or dollars per device to get better compression and lower transmission bandwidth. This observation has held true consistently in the 3 decades since compressed digital media was invented.

The constantly growing list of H265 patent pool organizations with various licensing plans made even Apple to join AV1 bandwagon.

that's not why Apply joined AV1. They joined AV1 because they were forced to. Netflix, Google, Amazon are all on the AV1 bandwagon. If Youtube, Netflix and Prime Video all use AV1 for future higher quality streams, Apple cannot avoid supporting it.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#325

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

moonchild wrote: post #292

p_l wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are compliant with MPEG patent licenses - they distribute source code you have to compile yourself and for non-commercial use. If you build x264 or other open source implementation of h.264/h.265, and embed it for example in commercial video conferencing software/appliance, you have to pay patent licensing fees for that product . It's also why Firefox downloads a blob from Cisco to handle MPEG-4 video - Cisco co…

Could firefox download x264 and compile it on-demand?

x264 is for encoding only.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#326

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

eigenvalue wrote: post #6

Can anyone verify if this is a real number? It’s possible sometimes to make surprising claims (such as 50% lower size) by relying on unusual or unrealistic situations. I would rather if they use a standard set of test videos with different content and resolutions, and some objective measure of fidelity to the original, when quoting these percentages. But if the 50% number is real, then that is truly remarkable. I won…

This has been going on since the birth of video codec. So for anyone who is new to this, the 50% are under the best case scenario. So they will compare it in 4K Res, where VVC has the highest advantage against HEVC, in measurement that fits those numbers. ( PSNR or SSIM ).

For lower res you will see lower percentage. You see the same claims from other codec as well.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#327

Post by iso947 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

inthewings wrote: post #58

eigenvalue wrote: post #6

Can anyone verify if this is a real number? It’s possible sometimes to make surprising claims (such as 50% lower size) by relying on unusual or unrealistic situations. I would rather if they use a standard set of test videos with different content and resolutions, and some objective measure of fidelity to the original, when quoting these percentages. But if the 50% number is real, then that is truly remarkable. I won…

Those numbers are valid for a specific PSNR... but marketing and PR obviously prefer to skip that point. For comparison, HEVC claimed 50 to 60% compared to AVC. You can compare with reality...

PSNR is a terrible way to measure video quality. SSIM is better but not great. VMAF is good but it’s skewed towards the types of material netflix has.

Objective video quality is a tricky thing to do and you can easily come out with a codec that’s great at fine details in foreground people but terrible at high speed panning of water and trees. Depending on the material depends where you want the quality to go.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#328

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #210

p_l wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are modern video codecs which are playing chicken with possible submarine patents. Ultimately, it's a question of how much you're gonna risk to get where you want, and how much power/influence/wealth you can bring to squash a possible lawsuit.

But H.265 and H.266 have the same risk - worse actually, as multiple submarine patents claims have risen again H.265, and there are now multiple licensing organizations that all claim they need to be paid if you want to use H.265, and over a decade later their claims still haven't been legally settled. To completely avoid risk your only choice is to to use old technology where all the patents have expired (20 years i…

>To completely avoid risk your only choice is to to use old technology where all the patents have expired

EVC baseline is basically that, only using technology based on H.264 that are already expired or soon to be expired and patented techniques from companies that are giving it away to the standard.

In some way EVC is even more exciting than VVC.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#329

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

How many weeks does it take to encode a 1-minute video on an average (non-gaming, I mean without a huge fancy GPU card or an i9/Threadripper CPU) PC?

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#330

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

WanderPanda wrote: post #199

vmception wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh China is doing pretty awesome so thats one big massive outlier distorting the entire supposition

isn’t China still mostly piggybacking on foreign innovation?

They have inveated in manufacturing, Solar, Nulcear and a number of other areas to the extent where they are now world leaders. You can debate relative merits, but if you rank countries it certai ly is doomg better than most.