H.265: Exploring the Pros, Cons, and Reality of Today's Options
More talked about than used, HEVC/H.265 was a popular topic at the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City. StreamingMedia.com contributor Jan Ozer explained how to produce and deploy H.265. Following that, Robert Reinhardt offered pros and cons for the codec. One the pro side, H.265 files are smaller.
"H.265 does live up to the hype. You can get the same quality at a lower bitrate compared to H.264," Reinhardt said. "I won't say it's a 2-to-1 savings, but all my testing that I'm going to show you today it was more 1.5-to-1, so basically it wasn't quite in half. Anywhere from maybe 33 percent or more, and again results are going to vary based on what kind of content you're sending through your encoder and how you've configured the encoder."
Those interested can go hands-on with H.265 right now.
"The other good news is you can start learning H.265 today. There's no reason why any of you, if you want to start experimenting with compression, can't start today," Reinhardt explained. "If you have a little help from a geek friend who knows how to compile it's real easy to compile software on a Mac -- much easier than it is to on a PC. I compile software on both platforms -- or Linux, for that matter. You don't have to pay a cent and you can start at least testing very basic parameters today."
For the bad news -- which starts with glacially slow encoding times -- watch the video below (and download Reinhardt's presentation).
H.265 versus H.264: The Reality of Your Options
The case for H.265, like most new video technologies, is compelling: better compression and faster/cheaper delivery over lower bit rates. For any content distributor seeking to distribute content to mobile devices over congested 3G/4G/LTE networks, these traits are highly desirable. However, the reality of real-world options can quickly deflate any optimistic plans. In this session, you learn how H.264 compression and deployment options can be used in typical online streaming workflows, and more importantly, if your target audiences can benefit.
Speaker: Robert Reinhardt, CTO, videoRx
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