x265 question

MikeLV schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 21:36 Uhr
Is HEVC a viable format yet? I will need to be encoding a bunch of long-play videos soon for commercial sale on a website and wondering if x265 should be considered. I don't really care about the slow encoding time, I'm more concerned about the ability for customers to be able to play the videos on their computers. Thanks for any input on the subject.

Kommentare

musicvid10 schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:01 Uhr
Download Handbrake and find out for yourself.
Quality is better; it's still to slow to be practical imo.
Do you really need the space savings over x264?

John_Cline schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:25 Uhr
x264 is probably the sweet spot right now for quality vesus maximum compatibility across a wide range of computers.
MikeLV schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:27 Uhr
I'm not as much concerned about the space, or even the bandwidth because serving files from Amazon S3 is cheap. My bigger concern is fast downloads for the customers. But now that I think about it, from what I've read so far, x265 wouldn't be great to offer because most of my customers are of the older generation and they're not exactly techies with the latest and greatest devices/computers. Heck, some of them still have trouble finding ROM content on a DVD. I think I'll just offer high and low quality x264 encoded files. If/when 265 becomes as mainstream as 264, then I can always re-encode from the source projects and offer those files. Even the slowest broadband connection is still faster than shipping tangible DVDs.
John_Cline schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:40 Uhr
Depending on how much detail and motion are in your videos, h.264 rendered with Handbrake can look remarkably good at low bitrates. However, h.264 is not well supported in Windows XP without installing a third-party player. I guess you'll need to draw the line somewhere regarding minimum specs and maintaining compatibility with older machines. Are you talking about downloading or streaming?
MikeLV schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:45 Uhr
Talking about download-to-own, not streaming. I could always note a recommendation with their purchase, for the VLC player since it's available for every platform, and it's free, small, easy to install, etc.
astar schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 22:57 Uhr
VP9, which is googles version of HEVC, is supported on all versions of chrome on all devices. And certain other browsers support it as well.

The file container is webm however, which most have a hard time understanding that .MP4 is not h.264.

w3schools shows 80% of users on Windows, and 68% of all platforms users on Chrome. w3schools users are of course computer literate users.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp

In my testing of MPEG-DASH content, HEVC encoded material was not widely supported on enough devices to make it good choice. I tested on a variety of OS, Browsers, and device types. VP9 DASH streams were supported, but mostly only in chrome.

Handbrake is just a GUI to FFMPEG, and ffmpeg commands allow for much more control over the stream formats.

MikeLV schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 23:12 Uhr
Yes Handbrake is a GUI, but what additional control does the command line program have? I thought Handbrake lets you fine tune everything, plus you can frameserve to it now with the vegas2handbrake script, which saves a step of encoding a large intermediary file. What advantages does FFMPEG offer?
musicvid10 schrieb am 15.02.2016 um 23:43 Uhr
No, playability is not consistent across browsers and platforms.
That beats download speed by a mile.
I'm going to give it a couple of years, but it may go the way of Google VP8.
John_Cline schrieb am 16.02.2016 um 07:13 Uhr
"Handbrake is just a GUI to FFMPEG"

I believe that Handbrake is essentially a GUI for the x.264 encoder, not the FFMPEG encoder.
musicvid10 schrieb am 16.02.2016 um 13:22 Uhr
Handbrake uses a variety of libraries, but not ffmpeg (except for a couple of minor tasks), under the hood of its custom engine, which is vastly more complicated than a "frontend." It draws on a number of filters interactively to synthesize a single, powerful command. An example of such a command is "Decomb," which invokes a dozen or so combinations of unassociated filters to decide how to process a single frame!

The primary encoding library for x264/x265 is libavcodec, which is not quite the same as ffmpeg, nor does Handbrake recognize ffmpeg or avisynth command lines.

Ffmpeg is using legal obstructionist tactics, google-style, to stifle "competition" in the GNU/GPL arena, so the Handbrake developers, who are hyper-vigilant of licensing issues, made a good choice not to go with it.