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Google added HEVC support in Chrome

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Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#21

Post by crazygringo »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #18

Why do pirates prefer hevc over AV1? I assume they don’t care about intellectual property so I assume it comes down to technical quality of the algorithms? Maybe they have moved to av1 and I just don’t know it. Either way the quality of the piracy scene has always seemed vastly better than legitimate channels, up until Netflix.

At least with web streams, pirates don't re-encode.

And since web streams are in h.264 and h.265, that's what the torrents are in too. It's not about preference, it's about the source.

(And the web streams are in h.264 and h.265 because that's what people have the most hardware decoders for, which preserves CPU usage and battery life.)

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#23

Post by colinsane »

mroche wrote: post #10

On one hand, that's great for anyone watching HEVC content in Chrome. On the other, I'd prefer to not see further adoption of HEVC and instead see increased deployment of VP9 and AV1 wherever possible. Let MPEG-LA and the other HEVC patent pools+holders... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Future looking, no one should even touch VVC/H.266. Unfortunately the above rant does not address the gap in hardware…

is it possible to implement generic/unencumbered blocks at the HW level and then string them together at the SW or firmware layer? how much efficiency do you lose? if you can move all the patentable stuff into SW then we can do the same thing we all did with mp3 patents: i.e. ignore them (see: LAME).

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#24

Post by crazygringo »

hauxir wrote: post #11

Doesn't seem to work for me, running chrome 107 on macos and the example does not load for me.

It's working for me -- I'm on Chrome 106 on Mac (M1) and the example reports "hvc1" as it's playing.

You might have an older Mac without the necessary hardware decoder.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#25

Post by gjsman-1000 »

mroche wrote: post #10

On one hand, that's great for anyone watching HEVC content in Chrome. On the other, I'd prefer to not see further adoption of HEVC and instead see increased deployment of VP9 and AV1 wherever possible. Let MPEG-LA and the other HEVC patent pools+holders... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Future looking, no one should even touch VVC/H.266. Unfortunately the above rant does not address the gap in hardware…

Don’t worry - VVC found its way into the new Europe DVB Broadcast TV standard, as well as the upcoming Brazilian Broadcast TV standards.

(As for America, ATSC 3.0 / NextGen TV uses… HEVC. Better than MPEG-2, I guess.)

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#26

Post by LeoPanthera »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #18

Why do pirates prefer hevc over AV1? I assume they don’t care about intellectual property so I assume it comes down to technical quality of the algorithms? Maybe they have moved to av1 and I just don’t know it. Either way the quality of the piracy scene has always seemed vastly better than legitimate channels, up until Netflix.

HEVC encoding is far more mature. Encoders are faster, of better quality, and hardware acceleration exists. Additionally, for video playback outside of a PC, HEVC support is ubiquitous, AV1 support is virtually unknown.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#28

Post by svnpenn »

freedomben wrote: post #8

> Does is(sic) also work with DRM? > That’s where the catch is, unfortunately. The biggest drawback is that HEVC with Widevine DRM is not supported at this point, only clear, unprotected content. It’s unclear whether Google has plans to add support for this in the future or not. That was my first question. I hoped against hope that it wasn't a trojan horse for some new DRM. Surely they are going to add Widevine suppo…

> HEVC with Widevine DRM is not supported

This isn't true at all. True, HEVC doesn't support Box level encryption like MP4 does, but nothing is stopping anyone from just AES encrypting an entire fragment, as has been used for years with HLSe. The fact that MP4 uses box level encryption is one of the stupidest tech-related things I have ever seen. It forces anyone who wants to decrypt (or encrypt) to write a full MP4 parser, instead of just utilizing existing encryption tools on some "dumb bytes". Once people realize that you can just use HLSe method with HEVC, websites can then pull the keys from the M3U files and just return them from Widevine license requests instead.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#29

Post by LeoPanthera »

snvzz wrote: post #6

Why is this being done, when AV1 exists? It's hard to see HEVC as anything else than a legal liability.

> It's hard to see HEVC as anything else than a legal liability.

I actually think the truth is the exact reverse. HEVC has easy-to-license patent pools. A couple of clicks and done.

The patent situation surrounding AV1 is complex. It claims to be a free format but multiple entities claim patents that cover it. A submarine patent lawsuit seems likely.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#30

Post by fomine3 »

Varloom wrote: post #15

Every new software and hardware is moving towards the royalty free, agile and efficient AV1 codec. But out of nowhere and 9 years after its release, they add support to the mother of all royalties HEVC codec. Probably had some kind of deal to benefit their android partner Samsung, since they own pretty much most of HEVC patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...

Bytedance employee worked to support HEVC https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-deco... https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=128613...
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