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Google added HEVC support in Chrome

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Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#61

Post by bubblethink »

chrisseaton wrote: post #40
bubblethink wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mystery is who is paying whom ? Is Microsoft paying for HEVC licences ? Google ? Distributor ? Silicon vendors ? All of them ? The question above is, "Why use HEVC(pay) when AV1 exists ?". Or, "Why care about AV1 if everyone is paying ?"

> The mystery is who is paying whom ? Hardware IP people are paying licenser people, with consumers eventually paying hardware IP people. > "Why use HEVC(pay) when AV1 exists ?" Because HEVC has hardware support, right now, so it's faster. > "Why care about AV1 if everyone is paying ?" People don't much.

>Because HEVC has hardware support, right now, so it's faster.

Most new hardware supports hardware decode for AV1 too. There were 1-2 generations prior to the current one that had HECV but not AV1, but that sample size will become irrelevant over time.

>People don't much.

Well, clearly people who make decisions do. If you ask an average person on the street if they care about HEVC or AV1, they don't. If you ask Netflix or Google, they do.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#62

Post by bubblethink »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #29
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.

>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.

This can be said about anything. Sounds like FUD. There hasn't been a successful lawsuit yet, right ?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#63

Post by rkagerer »

paxys wrote: post #58
crazygringo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just add it to release notes? Or mention it in the blog post for the new Chrome version? "Quietly" fits perfectly in this case if it didn't do either of those, when it's actually a huge deal.

Chrome does not have release notes. The blog post only mentions CVE fixes and points you to Git logs for the rest of the work. Only a tiny number of new Chrome features (out of the thousands of changes and bug fixes done in every release) get further marketing treatment, and they are obviously going to focus on those directly relevant for users over a new video codec. Just because they didn't call out the change anyw…

Chrome does not have release notes.

They just can't be bothered to recap the changes?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#64

Post by slabity »

Thaxll wrote: post #53
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…

Did you tried to encode anything with av1? Even with a high end CPU it's just not feasible, I tried with ffmpeg and it was encoding a single digit fps per seconds. A video of just 10min would take many hours, on the other end h265 encoding is slow but doable. Edit: just retried on my laptop: 0.6fps with a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz Using the lastest version of ffmpeg with the sample from the wiki:…

I'm able to encode using av1an (which I believe still uses ffmpeg as its backend) at 3440x1440@30Hz with 10bit color using a mid/high-range AMD 3800X processor.

I'm not sure what might be wrong on your end, but it sounds like ffmpeg's default configs might not be well-optimized yet if you can't encode in real time.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#65

Post by mihaic »

crazygringo wrote: post #21
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.)

That applies for TV show. For movies though, the vast majority of new torrents are Blurays re-encoded to HEVC (x265 being the encoder used pretty much every time).

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#66

Post by bscphil »

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…

It's ironic, not one week ago there were a bunch of complaints on this site saying that Google was abusing their position of power (controlling YouTube, Chrome, Android TV, etc) by pushing AV1. Now they bring HEVC support to Chrome and the top comment is another complaint!

(That said, I agree with you. I think a codec being royalty free is a very good reason to prefer it to other codecs.)

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#67

Post by mustache_kimono »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #26
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.

And -- universality of the playback. "Why don't people adopt Vorbis?" almost answers itself, "Where/on what devices are they going to play it?" Without looking -- does your Apple TV support X?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#68

Post by ComputerGuru »

svnpenn wrote: post #28
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…

> True, HEVC doesn't support Box level encryption like MP4 does

I’m not sure why you’re comparing a codec to a container format?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#69

Post by ComputerGuru »

svnpenn wrote: post #46
favorited wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It forces anyone who wants to decrypt (or encrypt) to write a full MP4 parser MP4 is seriously one of the easiest binary formats to parse, and even if you couldn't use an existing parser it would probably be the simplest part of whatever you were actually building.

> it would probably be the simplest part of whatever you were actually building Unless you've written a Widevine client, downloaded from DASH, parsed MP4, decrypted MP4 samples, then reassembled the decrypted fragments, then you're really not in a position to be making this claim. I have done all the above, and the MP4 parsing was by far the most difficult part of the process, and that includes parsing Protocol Buffe…

I’ve written a (partial) zero-alloc MP4 decoder and it was definitely not as easy as the other poster makes it sound.
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