Google added HEVC support in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#131

Post by andsoitis » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:02 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #115

andsoitis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PS5, XBox One From https://netflixtechblog.com/bringing-av1-streaming-to-netfli... : "Netflix has also partnered with YouTube to develop an open-source solution for an AV1 decoder on game consoles that utilizes the additional power of GPUs."

Which is one part of the problem. But still today you can take an HEVC iPhone or GoPro video and watch it on your PS5 with full hardware encoding. This open source solution doesn't help with that.

Very very few people are probably interested in doing that.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#132

Post by Maursault » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:04 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #114

Maursault wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the Quicktime File Format, MP4 is most usually only a container these days. Moving Pictures Experts Group developed the MPEG-4 standard with many parts[1] including a codec called MPEG-4 aka MP4V or just MP4, which was still popular for SD video encoding only a few years ago, though not exclusively, and it is still available to encode video in Apple Quicktime (MPEG-4 Basic, MPEG-4 Advanced), ffmpeg, HandBrak…

I agree with your assessment. The reference to “box” makes me think it was definitely the container. I also don’t see the codec called MP4, it’s usually spelled out MPEG-4.

".mp4" is just a file extension, the source of the colloquial name for the container. But both the container and the codec are named MPEG-4 and both are colloquially called "MP4."

"Box level" is apparently referring to types of cryptography, "S-boxes are non-linear transformations of a few input bits that provide confusion and P-boxes simply shuffle the input bits around to provide diffusion"[1] The basic function of S-Box[2] is to transform 8 bits input data into 8 bits of secret data using a precomputed look-up-table (LUT). A "permutation box (or P-box) is a method of bit-shuffling used to permute or transpose bits across S-boxes inputs, retaining diffusion while transposing."[3]

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/learning/symmetric-cryptography-ess...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-box

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_box

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#133

Post by acchow » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:06 AM UTC

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...

Samsung owns most HEVC patents? That doesn’t make sense given that MPEG LA is suing Samsung for HEVC patent infringement

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#134

Post by GingerMidas » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #101

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.

Some discussion on this question 2.5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362098

Thanks, I like reading this stuff. But that link was 3.5 years ago

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#135

Post by snvzz » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #14

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.

Most older hardware has HEVC decoding but only the last few gens have AV1. My 10980XE is like 96% occupied while watching AV1 without HW acceleration so many smaller devices can't do anything resembling a smooth playback.

>My 10980XE is like 96% occupied while watching AV1 without HW acceleration

That shouldn't be the case. I play AV1 (via dav1d, software) w/o issue on much weaker CPUs than that (a zen1 laptop cpu and a haswell i7). The CPU is mostly idle.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#136

Post by CharlesW » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:20 AM UTC

I think most of the commenters are basing their responses on the (terrible) headline rather than what actually seems to have happened.

As comment 19 of the bug report says, "This bug is not about to implement HEVC in Chrome", and "Chrome does already support the native HEVC decoder for progressive download videos using the HTML5 tag on Android". The issue description notes that as of Feb 2015, "Playing plain HEVC mp4 files in Chrome/Android/Nexus5 works fine".

This new fix just corrects the handling of HEVC in the Chrome's Media Source API (formerly known as "Media Source Extensions").

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#137

Post by tedd4u » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #103

Xorlev wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, I think it was illustrating the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" approach HN takes to Google in general.

> HN takes to Google in general Not exclusive to HN. Humans just have different opinions.

But HN moderators usually seem to upvote the complaints over the kudos.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#138

Post by rubatuga » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #122

NelsonMinar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jeez, I remember most pirated video was using xvid, what a dark time that was.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#139

Post by alrlroipsp » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #90

NavinF wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last sentence implies he can encode at 30fps, same frame rate as the video.

I highly doubt that, my 5800x can't encode at that speed with h264 ( slow preset ) so a modern codec is probably 10x slower.

Cool guess, cowboy

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#140

Post by concinds » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #85

bscphil wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

There may be more than one person posting on HN.

The comment was about the internet "hivemind"; no need to be pedantic about it.

Keep in mind that upwards of 95% of people will read comments but not post any themselves (and to address an obvious retort, sure, it'll be a different 95% for each submission). So the general "tone" of the comments absolutely impacts public perception, especially now that practically no-one consumes straight-news without social media commentary.

Redditors use identical arguments: "we're different people!" when their website is the most groupthink-y of all.