Live data from Hacker News

Google added HEVC support in Chrome

bitmovin.com

71–80 of 225 posts

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#71
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

UHD Blu rays are also HEVC.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#72
post #64
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You haven’t mentioned at what fps you can encode.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#74
post #58

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…

It definitely does have release notes.

The top of the Chromium blog [1] currently says "Find the release notes for Chrome Beta 107 here." and they point to [2].

Which is definitly not marketing treatment -- it's deep in the weeds of changes for CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and so forth.

It's obviously not including every change made, but it does seem like it's intending to be fairly comprehensive in terms of new relevant changes for developers.

[1] https://blog.chromium.org/

[2] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-107-beta/

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#76
post #56
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Try compiling ffmpeg with `--enable-librav1e` and use the `rav1e` encoder implementation. It's supposed to be the fastest software encoder, though of course it can still quite slow depending on the settings. If you have a newish Intel CPU they're supposed to have good AV1 hardware encoding support. See SVT-AV1. (which ffmpeg also supports: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AV1#SVT-AV1 )

I don't think there are CPUs with integrated GPUs from Intel that do AV1 encoding yet. Raptor Lake launched on October 20, 2022, and while RL will decode AV1, it won't encode it. The Intel Arc cards will encode AV1. The next generation of Intel CPUs with integrated GPUs are supposed to have AV1 encode. Maybe a year or two away?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

> Sounds like FUD

The Alliance for Open Source Media (the group behind AV1) is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the European Commission[1] who, per the article, appear to be threatening those who distribute software decoding with a fine of 10% of global revenue.

According to this article[2], Sisvel, the patent group claims its licensing for AV1 is

> more convenient than licensing from individual patent holders, which in this case include companies like Philips, GE, NTT, Ericsson, Dolby and Toshiba

So, yes there is FUD around AV1, but as FUD goes, it’s pretty legit considering the players and their “nationality ”.

[1]https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-eu-antitrust-re...

[2]https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/patent-group-wants-a-new-to...

Going to add that I don’t have any knowledge of the legitimacy of the patents involved, and think the legitimacy of software patents generally is often questionable.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

> There hasn't been a successful lawsuit yet

Why would it come to a lawsuit ? Companies would simply just pay the royalty.

That's how it has been for previous codecs.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#79
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

No, "we" cannot just ignore patents by implementing them in software. Maybe you can but that doesn't scale.

tell that to every Linux user who was doing anything with mp3's before the patents expired just a couple years ago. i'm pretty sure even the Windows version of Audacity -- a tool with over 100 million downloads -- integrated with it. are you claiming the LAME approach wasn't successful? or that its success was a fluke, context-dependent, or for some other reason is a bad analogue?

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#80

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.

It comes down to the fact that HEVC is supported by more devices. 1080p and lower resolution versions of pirated movies still come in H264, because that is supported by even more devices...
Post reply on HN