The ITU-T began development of a successor to H.264 in 2004, while ISO/IEC began working in 2007. In January 2010, the groups collaborated on a joint Call for Proposals, which culminated in a meeting of the MPEG & VCEG Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) in April 2010, at which the name High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) was adopted for the codec. In October, 2010, the JCT-VC produced the first working draft specification, with the Draft Standard — based upon the eight working draft specifications — approved in July, 2012. In January of this year the ITU announced that HEVC had received first stage approval (consent) in the ITU-T Alternative Approval Process, while MPEG announced that HEVC had been promoted to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) status in the MPEG standardization process. In April 13, 2013: HEVC/H.265 approved as an ITU-T standard, and it’s now available for download on the ITU-T site.

How Does it Work?

Source video, consisting of video frames, is encoded or compressed by an HEVC video encoder to create a compressed video bitstream. Each individual frame is first broken up into blocks of pixels. The blocks are then analyzed for spatial redundancies and temporal linkages between frames are analyzed to take advantage of areas that do not change. These are encoded via motion vectors that predict qualities of the given block on the next frame. The residual information is encoded using an efficient binary compression.

This standard can definitely enable better compression. Same picture size and quality, a HEVC sequence can occupy less storage or transmission capacity than the equivalent H.264 video sequence. And the quality or resolutions should be higher than the H.264 video sequence.

Benefits of HEVC

As mentioned above, according to multiple studies HEVC should deliver up to 50% better compression than H.264 in video on demand (VOD) applications, which means better quality at half the bitrate. In live encoding, which obviously has to be performed in real time, the initial expectations are a 35% bandwidth reduction at similar quality levels. Alternatively, HEVC can also enable larger resolution movies, whether 2K or 4K. In addition to the ability to stream higher quality video to lower bitrate connections, encoding with HEVC rather than H.264 will add to cost savings.

While H.264 was the codec that originally facilitated OTT and was the making of Netflix and YouTube, HEVC could prove to be the codec that, by enabling HD quality, makes unmanaged networks viable for delivering premium Pay TV services. One definite is that HEVC will cut IP transport costs over CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) for OTT services.

One thing is for sure, there is a significant difference in quality when comparing HEVC to H.264

HEVC Adoption

A multitude of tech companies are starting to adapt the new standard and offer support. Announcements from Samsung and LG spoke of future decoding support in their plasma/HD TV’s , and the the Samsung Galaxy S4 will also offer support for the latest codec. At this year’s IBC, several companies confirmed backing of the standard. However, none of the big players in the mobile or other spaces (Adobe, Google, or Microsoft) have yet adapted HEVC or announced HEVC playback support in their respective players, browsers, or mobile or desktop operating systems. Apple however has moved to support HEVC on its iPads — those sold in 2012 are HEVC compliant.

Why the lag in adoption of the new codec? One explanation may be that no one knows what it will cost to use HEVC. When widespread playback becomes available, the adaptation should increase. In addition to ubiquitous playback via HEVC in a player, the incorporation of HEVC playback into the iOS or Android platforms, either via an app or OS upgrade, will be necessary for ratification of the standard. The availability of inexpensive decoding for OTT set top boxes and the announcement that some of the major OTT players will support playback via firmware or software upgrades will also be key in pushing adaptation. Mobile video and OTT will be the drivers of HEVC.

In a report by Multimedia Research Group , it is estimated that the number of consumer devices that shipped in 2011 and 2012 that would be capable of HEVC playback with a software upgrade totaled around 1.4 billion, with more than a billion more expected to be sold in 2013.

Encoding.com and HEVC

We are always working to keep our media services on the leading edge. Encoding.com has plans to support H.265 in early 2014. For more information, please feel free to contact us for a free consultation or for anything on your encoding needs.