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Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#121

Post by Tepix »

metalliqaz wrote: post #88
babypuncher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with AV1 is that hardware support for it is far from ubiquitous. I can load up a file I encoded with x265 on any of my devices from the last 6 years and be sure that it will play back smoothly without eating battery. The only device in my house with hardware AV1 support is the RTX 3080 in my desktop. So for the time being, I encode all my blu-ray rips with x265.

My GTX980 did not support HEVC decoding in hardware, and as a result it played like crap on my system. The Nvidia cards have only supported it since the GTX 10 series. That isn't very old IMHO.

The GTX980 was introduced in 2014. It's plenty old.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#122

Post by spartanatreyu »

metalliqaz wrote: post #88
babypuncher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with AV1 is that hardware support for it is far from ubiquitous. I can load up a file I encoded with x265 on any of my devices from the last 6 years and be sure that it will play back smoothly without eating battery. The only device in my house with hardware AV1 support is the RTX 3080 in my desktop. So for the time being, I encode all my blu-ray rips with x265.

My GTX980 did not support HEVC decoding in hardware, and as a result it played like crap on my system. The Nvidia cards have only supported it since the GTX 10 series. That isn't very old IMHO.

The 900 series came out nearly 8 years ago. Back then the world was worried about Ebola and Russia was annexing Crimea.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#123

Post by NavinF »

metalliqaz wrote: post #88
babypuncher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with AV1 is that hardware support for it is far from ubiquitous. I can load up a file I encoded with x265 on any of my devices from the last 6 years and be sure that it will play back smoothly without eating battery. The only device in my house with hardware AV1 support is the RTX 3080 in my desktop. So for the time being, I encode all my blu-ray rips with x265.

My GTX980 did not support HEVC decoding in hardware, and as a result it played like crap on my system. The Nvidia cards have only supported it since the GTX 10 series. That isn't very old IMHO.

The GTX10 series is pretty old as far as computer hardware goes. Hardly anyone runs anything older, even in third world countries: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Software decoding should also work on a $100 cpu.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#124

Post by hitovst »

akersten wrote: post #40

Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms data into A/V content. Never to mention the two blatant issues with this, being: 1) video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is 2) a process being "essential" to a…

"IP" isn't property.

Also, only decentralizing, open source, individual empowering, tech, isn't anti-human.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#125

Post by dopa42365 »

Sunspark wrote: post #36
dopa42365 wrote: post #14

New Edge supports it, if you have the h265 extension from the microsoft store (cmd "start ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq"). It's also the only (?) browser that supports AC-3 audio. Thanks for nothing, Dolby. There's barely any content though (possibly premium VODs on Netflix etc). Bilibili (kinda like Chinese youtube) offers HEVC (and AV1) playback, if your browser supports it. Example: https://www.bi…

It's odd that the browser supports AC-3 but the MS video player does not unless you pay for the codec, while all the other video players include it. Going with AV1 is not an option for the vast majority of people as it requires hardware support. If you try using AV1 on a computer that didn't come with a hardware decoder for it, your machine will crawl. I force h264 in YouTube for this reason instead of using VP9.

You can easily watch 4k AV1 videos on any recent 6+ cores CPU.

So, not an issue unless you're using hardware from 2015 or so? In which case you're unlikely watching a ton of 4k+ content anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#126

Post by dopa42365 »

nabakin wrote: post #113
dopa42365 wrote: post #14

New Edge supports it, if you have the h265 extension from the microsoft store (cmd "start ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq"). It's also the only (?) browser that supports AC-3 audio. Thanks for nothing, Dolby. There's barely any content though (possibly premium VODs on Netflix etc). Bilibili (kinda like Chinese youtube) offers HEVC (and AV1) playback, if your browser supports it. Example: https://www.bi…

> In general it's kind of a moot point by now, just go with AV1. Safari doesn't support AV1 though. I'll stick with AVC until it does

Remember: those h264 artifacts aren't real, they can't hurt you!

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#127

Post by dopa42365 »

anaisbetts wrote: post #69
dopa42365 wrote: post #14

New Edge supports it, if you have the h265 extension from the microsoft store (cmd "start ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq"). It's also the only (?) browser that supports AC-3 audio. Thanks for nothing, Dolby. There's barely any content though (possibly premium VODs on Netflix etc). Bilibili (kinda like Chinese youtube) offers HEVC (and AV1) playback, if your browser supports it. Example: https://www.bi…

I'm not sure if this is the case. Current Edge Dev (102.0.1245.3) reports "No" for HEVC, even with the extension installed. Old Edge based on EdgeHTML/Spartan would indeed play HEVC content

Drop some local h265 mp4s into your edge browser, works fine for me with the extension.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#128

Post by karmakaze »

astrange wrote: post #120
karmakaze wrote: post #89

Another question is why don't browsers support MKV container format? From an arbitrary search "The Matroska project is supported by a non-profit organization and is a fork of the Multimedia Container Format. It was first announced to the public at the end of 2002 and is a completely royalty-free open standard that's free for both private and commercial use."

They do; WebM is MKV. General MKV support is approximately impossible because the subtitle format is extremely complicated and not specified. libass only implements it by being bug-compatible to an old piece of Windows software. Also, MKV isn't a great file format; the way it does timestamps is all wrong for instance. It stores them as decimals when they're naturally rational fractions, so it's a strange choice for a…

Interesting about the relation between WebM and MKV found in google search:

"Many Web browsers support WebM, which is a restricted version of MKV. The most important restriction is in the allowed video codecs. WebM video uses only the VP8 and VP9 codecs, which are open and royalty-free. All WebM files are MKV files, but not all MKV files are consistent with WebM"

So the question comes back to supported codec moreso than container format.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#130

Post by _carbyau_ »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #100

Because people prefer to destroy ecology and user experience than pay one symbolic dollar for a lifetime license

That symbolic dollar causes so much overhead though.

Who tracks who has bought or not bought it? Should users/software devs/hardware makers pay? For potentially billions of users/software copies/devices across many national jurisdictions.

I click the x265 video link. And now the browser/OS/hardware have to do a dance to determine if I am allowed to watch the video or not.

Or because that is a big hassle, don't bother. Use x264 until AV1 is supported.

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