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Full Version: HEVC (also known as h.265) - Review
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(2014-01-21, 07:39)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]"Read it as you wish"?? How else does one read "It better happen sooner rather than later" ?

I assume you are referring to the XBMC feature freeze? The ffmpeg resync happens a long time before feature freeze. Like it or not, approve of the way XBMC devs handle the code or don't approve, that is up to you, but that is the way it is.

(2014-01-21, 07:35)bearshare Wrote: [ -> ]Hunger Games IMAX edition in x265 10gigs.

works in VLC
LOL Can you suggest a smaller sample?


I tried to find an x265 file for you but it's hard to find something that isn't copyrighted.

NONE of the uploads out there even had a "sample" test file to see quality like most major release. The only "test" files you can use that are small are cartoons which come in under 200 MB. I don't think an episode of Family Guy is the best test.

There are episodes of "The Tomorrow People" out there those are the smallest HEVC files I found at under 800 MB.

Not sure why you wanted a sample (can't find the request for one I'm not sure why bearshare posted Hunger Games IMAX blah blalhb lah) but I looked for you.
1st person that posts an URL to a copyright file gets shot Smile
(2014-01-21, 22:45)davilla Wrote: [ -> ]1st person that posts an URL to a copyright file gets shot Smile



Hunger Games Angel
Kind of hard to do a comparison when they only post x264 or x265 and not both versions of the file. I'll have to download it though at one point just to see x265 CPU utilization. I got a pretty old laptop so it'll be a nice test to see how well old hardware handles x265 playback.

I have a 2.26 Ghz Penryn Processor
Part of the Intel Centrio 2 mobile family?

Really old like 2008 lol.
There are plenty of h264 examples of Big Buck Bunny and Sintel around the net, so omparison should be possible.
(2014-01-21, 22:29)magao Wrote: [ -> ]I'd suggest having an early ffmpeg bump (to get h.265) post-gotham, with plans for a second bump nearer to beta. The earlier XBMC gets it the earlier issues will be found and (hopefully) fixed.

Gotham is in feature freeze so ffmpeg will not be upgraded in it anymore. Not in beta, not in final.

The first possibility to see an updated ffmpeg in xbmc will be a v14 alpha or later.
I think that's what he meant by "post-gotham" ;)
ARM demonstrated OpenCL accelerated HEVC / H.264 on new Mali GPUs at CES 2014 which is kind of cool even though the demo was using a proprietary codec

http://www.design-reuse.com/news/31647/h...ortex.html

Ittiam HEVC Decoder is basically a software decoder that uses OpenCL assisted GPGPU to off-load most decoding processes to the GPU

Quote:Phill Smith, Demo Manager at ARM, has filmed and uploaded four very interesting demos of what new features will be possible thanks to new generation ARM Mali-450 and Mali-T6xx GPUs including 4K 3D user interfaces and games, ASTC texture compression, and OpenCL accelerated gesture recognition and HEVC / H.265 video decoding.

The last demo is also running Linux on Arndale board. They show H.265 decode with the GPU thanks to Ittiam implementation.
HEVC / H.265 Video Decoding

Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/01/23/a...-decoding/
Quote:Ittiam HEVC Decoder To Provide H.265 Video Decoding for Existing ARM Cortex-A Devices

H.264 is now the favorite codec for many applications, and all ARM SoC providing multimedia capabilities support it. However, a new codec called H.265 (aka HEVC) is coming with twice the compression ratio with the same quality saving a lot of money for those who have to pay for the bandwidth. The transition between video codecs is normally a slow process, but as it happens you may wonder if you’ll be able to play H.265 videos on your existing ARM Cortex A9/A15 devices which do not support H.265 hardware video decoding. The answer appears to be “Yes You Can!”, as Ittiam Systems announced an HEVC decoder specifically designed for ARM Cortex A processors.

More specifically their software decoder will support:

ARMv7 Cores with NEON – Cortex A8, Cortex A5, Cortex A9, Cortex A15, Cortex A7 and the multi core variants
Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8064/MPQ8064 , MSM8960

Ittiam HEVC decoder mainly targets devices such as set-top boxes, Internet enabled TVs, smart TVs etc… It should also work on your smartphones and tablets, but video software decoding could deplete your battery rapidly.

There’s currently no performance data, but the maximum resolution / bitrate should be heavily dependent on the CPU processing power of your device. Ittiam is also working on an improved version with OpenCL support, and a DSP based implementations of Ittiam’s HEVC Encoder will be available later in the year.

Very little information currently available, but further details will probably be added to Ittiam HEVC Platforms Solutions page.

Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/03/14/i...-a-devices
(2014-01-23, 19:16)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]I think that's what he meant by "post-gotham" Wink

I don't think HEVC is a big deal to implement right now, and I'm not sure how adding features to Gotham works or anything, but it seems to me like waiting until 2015 (which is when I'd assume the next v14 comes out), would mean XBMC would be quite late to the HEVC ball.

I think HEVC isn't a big deal AT THE MOMENT, but I think people are over spculating on how long it will tkae to come to market. It sounds like how intel under estimated how important the tablet game would be and is now playing catch up. Industry changes faster than people are ready for, it's the people who are in front of the curve that reap the benefits. Although XBMC is free/open source, getting more users certainly does help and losing people to Plex/other solutions because of being late to the x265 game wouldn't be beneficial to anyone.

Again not saying it's urgent now. But I do think waiting til 2015 would be too late.
In the mean time, is it possible to launch an external ffmpeg compiled with hevc/h265 decoding on the linux (gotham) xbmc? h265 is already been adopted by the "scene"
gotham does away with the option to compile using external ffmpeg AFAIK.
It's an interesting issue but well, we'll see how it develops out. All of this talk and hey maybe x265 doesn't become relevant in 2k14 at all. And if it does become very relevant, I'm sure the issue will be addressed. I doubt the XBMC team would sit there and watch x265 become the main go to codec and then just refuse to support it until 2015.
@tutu: It's possible to build Gotham with an updated version of ffmpeg, yes. Obviously you need to know what you're doing when doing so - there are several minefields to hit, but basically the process is to update the internal ffmpeg version and go through the patches to ffmpeg we apply, applying any that aren't already there (many will be superseded as they are patches from newer versions of ffmpeg itself).

Once done, test, test, test some more.

Post-Gotham we'll be looking at moving the internal ffmpeg out into a separate subproject to make it easier to update (i.e. it'll be a fork of ffmpeg's git with our patches on top) which should simplify the above process a little.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Image
Big Buck Bunny low res h265 on an old Pentium E2180
(2014-01-24, 03:00)tential Wrote: [ -> ]It's an interesting issue but well, we'll see how it develops out. All of this talk and hey maybe x265 doesn't become relevant in 2k14 at all. And if it does become very relevant, I'm sure the issue will be addressed. I doubt the XBMC team would sit there and watch x265 become the main go to codec and then just refuse to support it until 2015.

It won't be the main codec even in 2015. It might be a rising star, or even a major contender in 2015, but it will take longer than that for the market to shift. Content providers and consumers are not just going to throw away their old devices that don't have raw CPU power for h.265. Being able to play content back on various devices is a big factor. Plus, the open source encoders will take a long time to really become efficient. The bleeding edge will always have access to custom builds or nightly builds.

So yeah, we'd totally sit there and wait until 2015 for an h.265 stable release. (not saying we will, but it's certainly possible)
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