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Google added HEVC support in Chrome

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Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#121
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...

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Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#122
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…

I think it's remarkable that the pirate scene has barely touched VP9 or AV1. We discussed this 2.5 years ago, nothing really has changed except there's more H.265 than before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362098

I remember maybe ten years ago "real" pirates (from "the scene") thought that everything needed to be in rar format, and anything else was considered "p2p" and not as pure. They were also late with h264 and used xvid for far too long.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#123
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…

I think it's remarkable that the pirate scene has barely touched VP9 or AV1. We discussed this 2.5 years ago, nothing really has changed except there's more H.265 than before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362098

Probably all comes down to ffmpeg not supporting av1 well. Pretty much everyone uses ffmpeg or a wrapper around ffmpeg like handbrake to encode. And my understanding is that ffmpeg implements an old and very slow and partially broken version of av1.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previous codes have been designed and sold as patented codecs. AV1 is meant to be royalty free by design. The claimants of the alleged patents can ask for money, but eventually somebody will refuse due to the very explicit royalty-free promise in AV1, and there should be a lawsuit. We have not seen that yet. As a practical matter, even if people are paying money silently, it would get on the grapevine. We haven't eve…

Even if creator said it's royalty free!, it's not guaranteed that there are no patent violation.

Hence, we would hear if people are being 1) sued, or 2) or are paying. We haven't seen any evidence of either.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure how you think for-profit companies like Mozilla, Google or Apple would get away with shipping 'ha ha I tricked you!' patent circumventions to a billion people. It's not like Audacity. Keep in mind that Firefox AFAIK still relies on OS codecs for h264 because shipping it themselves is such a difficult proposition due to patents. And on Windows, if you want native HEVC or AV1 playback you have to buy it fr…

On my new laptop, whenever opening a h265 I would get message from the media player saying I can buy HEVC for $3 or something.

But if you follow the link below to the Windows store, you can download it for free!

ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq

Found out on Howtogeek

https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#126
post #27

The word "quietly" should be banned from all tech headlines. What should Google have done? Launched a $10M marketing campaign to publicize this change?

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.

Exactly. IDK how people can use Google software. You never know when they will quietly inserts some spyware or adware into their so called open source software.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure how you think for-profit companies like Mozilla, Google or Apple would get away with shipping 'ha ha I tricked you!' patent circumventions to a billion people. It's not like Audacity. Keep in mind that Firefox AFAIK still relies on OS codecs for h264 because shipping it themselves is such a difficult proposition due to patents. And on Windows, if you want native HEVC or AV1 playback you have to buy it fr…

maybe i misunderstood, then. i thought that HEVC licensing was paid for by the hardware vendor, and hence acted as a broad tax even if you’re not using HEVC, or using GPUs in a HPC context, etc (and unnecessarily raises the barrier of entry to new HW vendors, etc). but if Windows users are individually paying those licenses, that’s probably not the case.

i guess the worry then is that HEVC crowds out AV1/others, and this Chrome change is setting the stage for it to become a broad tax on video? i could buy that angle.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#128
post #42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think apple uses HEVC and HEIF in their ios camera roll

Apple being the culprit doesn't surprise me. But didn't they back AV1 and AOM? So why are they causing this problem now?

Apple isn’t causing a problem in the manner you’re implying - they’ve been using those codecs for years at this point. All that’s happening here is chrome is adding support for an existing standardized format that is used by the general public in presumably sufficient amounts to warrant the complexity.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#129
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…

AV1 would be ideal to support. It is resource intensive for software, but with M2 MacBook Pros, for example and upcoming iPhone A17 processors, the AV1 decompression and compression codecs could be put in the hardware. AV1 reputedly is 30% more efficient than HEVC, important for a number of cases, such as more efficient use of bandwidth over cellular. For FaceTime over cellular Apple today uses the HEVC codecs if ava…

M2 doesn't have AV1 hardware decode.

My guess is that the next shot is with a TSMC N3E chip, which _may_ debut with iPhone 15 Pro. There's been conflicting reports if N3E will be ready when Apple needs it - September 2023 if it's for iPhone 15.

N3E based M3 Macbook Pro with hardware raytracing and hardware accelerated AV1 decode/encode would be nice.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#130
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…

I think it's remarkable that the pirate scene has barely touched VP9 or AV1. We discussed this 2.5 years ago, nothing really has changed except there's more H.265 than before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362098

Piracy is predicated on a rejection of intellectual property rights. So it's not clear why they would care who owns a codec.
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