H.265 Codec and MacBook Pro

dannybgoode · Dec 14, 2018

sar104 said:
Yes , that's correct. The 2017 models with Kaby Lake also have H.265 hardware encode/decode.

Thank crikey for that!! Bought the laptop before I even thought about getting a drone and spent far more money on it than was strictly necessary so pleased to know it'll do what I want still now I have the M2P. 16gb RAM as well so that always helps

Just been playing around in PowerDirector with some sample H.265 footage and it works well enough. Chuck enough effects and stuff at a clip and it will stutter a bit but it is perfectly useable for working on basic footage on and then I can always polish it up on the desktop PC.

CanadaDrone · Dec 14, 2018

sar104 said:
Processing power is not the issue here.

I didn't say it was - He seemed to be disappointed with the cost/performance ratio which is what I commented on. Most 6th gen/Skylake Intel CPUs support HW H265 decode.

Generally speaking those specs are very weak for photo/video editing though.

sar104 · Dec 14, 2018

CanadaDrone said:
I didn't say it was - He seemed to be disappointed with the cost/performance ratio which is what I commented on. Most 6th gen/Skylake Intel CPUs support HW H265 decode.

Generally speaking those specs are very weak for photo/video editing though.

Skylake does not support 10-bit HEVC, which is what is needed for this application. If it did then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

CanadaDrone · Dec 14, 2018

sar104 said:
Skylake does not support 10-bit HEVC, which is what is needed for this application. If it did then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Again, I didn't say they did - sorry if I am not being clear but I think you might be reading too far into my replies

The difference is in the bit depth, and 10bit decoding is in partially supported with a hybrid implementation in a Windows environment.

Skylake has full fixed-function H265/HEVC main 8-bit encoding and decoding acceleration, hybrid and partial HEVC main 10/10-bit decoding acceleration. If you want full 10-bit you need to move up to Kaby.

sar104 · Dec 14, 2018

CanadaDrone said:
Again, I didn't say they did - sorry if I am not being clear but I think you might be reading too far into my replies The difference is in the bit depth, and 10bit decoding is in partially supported with a hybrid implementation in a Windows environment.

Skylake has full fixed-function H265/HEVC main 8-bit encoding and decoding acceleration, hybrid and partial HEVC main 10/10-bit decoding acceleration. If you want full 10-bit you need to move up to Kaby.

Right - which is what the discussion was about before you interjected your opinion that it was an Apple issue.

CanadaDrone · Dec 14, 2018

sar104 said:
Right - which is what the discussion was about before you interjected your opinion that it was an Apple issue.

What are you talking about? I did not even remotely suggest it was an Apple issue, which would make no sense. Go back and read what I said. I made a completely generic comment about Apple's cost in reply to the OP's complaint about cost - that's it. If you read my posts instead of putting words in my mouth this entire back and forth/thread derail could have been avoided. Your last 3 replies have all put words into my mouth or made incorrect assumptions. Just slow down and take the time to read, we can all be friends

Lees23 · Dec 14, 2018

CanadaDrone said:
Welcome to Apple haha. For almost half that money you can get a laptop with several times the power without the Apple logo

And Windows... no thanks.

sar104 · Dec 14, 2018

CanadaDrone said:
What are you talking about? I did not even remotely suggest it was an Apple issue, which would make no sense. Go back and read what I said. I made a completely generic comment about Apple's cost in reply to the OP's complaint about cost - that's it. If you read my posts instead of putting words in my mouth this entire back and forth/thread derail could have been avoided. Your last 3 replies have all put words into my mouth or made incorrect assumptions. Just slow down and take the time to read, we can all be friends

Nothing personal at all, but your post that I replied to was unhelpful and misleading. And if it had nothing to do with the question under discussion then it was, itself, off-topic. You then followed with another response implying that Skylake processors would do the job, which was, at best, also misleading. You can certainly argue that your responses had nothing to do with the hardware requirements to view/process M2 H.265 files - the topic actually under discussion here - but don't bother trying to argue that I didn't read your posts and misunderstood what you were saying, or that I derailed the thread.

CanadaDrone · Dec 14, 2018

sar104 said:
Nothing personal at all, but your post that I replied to was unhelpful and misleading. And if it had nothing to do with the question under discussion then it was, itself, off-topic. You then followed with another response implying that Skylake processors would do the job, which was, at best, also misleading. You can certainly argue that your responses had nothing to do with the hardware requirements to view/process M2 H.265 files - the topic actually under discussion here - but don't bother trying to argue that I didn't read your posts and misunderstood what you were saying, or that I derailed the thread.

We are going in circles here. Apologies if I said anything that offended you. My original post was nothing more than a light-hearted response to a comment the OP made regarding the amount of money spent and not at all misleading because in no way did it have anything to do with what you took from it. I am sorry if you misinterpreted it as anything other than that. I truly have no idea how you thought what I said implied it was an Apple-specific issue when I made a comment solely about Apple's value proposition. There was no mention whatsoever about Apple-specific ability to deal with H265. I added a smiley face to make it even more obvious that it was tongue-in-cheek, as I myself own a lot of Apple products. A misunderstanding I guess.

sar104 said:
You can certainly argue that your responses had nothing to do with the hardware requirements to view/process M2 H.265 files - the topic actually under discussion here

CanadaDrone said:
Skylake has full fixed-function H265/HEVC main 8-bit encoding and decoding acceleration, hybrid and partial HEVC main 10/10-bit decoding acceleration. If you want full 10-bit you need to move up to Kaby.

Now can you see why I don't think you're reading my posts? Anyways...can we put this to bed? It is not helping anyone anymore.

toddwaddington · Dec 14, 2018

maxwebbi said:
Yeah, it looks like my CPU is the problem. I'm still shocked... 2250$ and it's not able to play a H.265 coded video.
Is there another solution except buying new hardware?
I want to you use the DLOG-M oder HLG style. But these styles are forcing me to use H.265

What editing platform are you using? Final Cut Pro X accepts H.265. Is your software up to date? If you don’t have it, I would suggest investing in FCPX. It will be cheaper (it’s not cheap, but considering what a powerful app it is, it’s a bargain) than buying a new computer and you’ll use it.

toddwaddington · Dec 14, 2018

toddwaddington said:
What editing platform are you using? Final Cut Pro X accepts H.265. Is your software up to date? If you don’t have it, I would suggest investing in FCPX. It will be cheaper (it’s not cheap, but considering what a powerful app it is, it’s a bargain) than buying a new computer and you’ll use it.

PS, you have to be running the latest operating system: Mojave.

sar104 · Dec 14, 2018

CanadaDrone said:
We are going in circles here. Apologies if I said anything that offended you. My original post was nothing more than a light-hearted response to a comment the OP made regarding the amount of money spent and not at all misleading because in no way did it have anything to do with what you took from it. I am sorry if you misinterpreted it as anything other than that. I truly have no idea how you thought what I said implied it was an Apple-specific issue when I made a comment solely about Apple's value proposition. There was no mention whatsoever about Apple-specific ability to deal with H265. I added a smiley face to make it even more obvious that it was tongue-in-cheek, as I myself own a lot of Apple products. A misunderstanding I guess.

Now can you see why I don't think you're reading my posts? Anyways...can we put this to bed? It is not helping anyone anymore.

That's fine, and I was not even remotely offended - except slightly, perhaps when you attempted to appropriate the moral high ground. I have no problem with whatever you might think about Apple or any other company. I responded because the discussion had turned to the specific issue of what is needed, computationally, to handle H.265 10-bit, and your responses, tongue-in-cheek or not, were misleading - i.e. it's not a platform-dependent problem and Skylake is not going to cut it. I think the issue is now clarified and all is good.

Roamer105 · Dec 15, 2018

maxwebbi said:
Wth?!?! I paid 2000€ for my MBP and it's to low for H.265. WOW Apple!
I've not used an editing software yet... i've just tried to play the video.

Macs have never been much in a way of speed daemons. Apple focuses on user experience and aesthetics along with reliability.

Lees23 · Dec 15, 2018

Roamer105 said:
Macs have never been much in a way of speed daemons. Apple focuses on user experience and aesthetics along with reliability.

Have you watched this video?

Roamer105 · Dec 15, 2018

Lees23 said:
Have you watched this video?

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Just did now. Pretty impressive maybe a bit uncharacteristic for Apple looking back. Not sure how satisfying it would be for grading and rendering 4K video.

My preference for this kind of activity is a workhorse desktop with a large 4K monitor coupled with at least 10 Terabytes of high speed storage and SSDs for system and temp storage.

sar104 · Dec 15, 2018

Roamer105 said:
Just did now. Pretty impressive maybe a bit uncharacteristic for Apple looking back. Not sure how satisfying it would be for grading and rendering 4K video.

My preference for this kind of activity is a workhorse desktop with a large 4K monitor coupled with at least 10 Terabytes of high speed storage and SSDs for system and temp storage.

I have the bigger brother of the machine they reviewed (i9 Coffee Lake 6-core / Intel UHD 630 + Radeon Pro 560X / 32 GB / 1 TB SSD), and it is surprisingly quick. It will drive a couple of 4k or one 5k monitors. I'm still testing it out for video rendering and it seems to be pretty capable, but it's not going to rival a serious desktop system.

Roamer105 · Dec 15, 2018

sar104 said:
I have the bigger brother of the machine they reviewed (i9 Coffee Lake 6-core / Intel UHD 630 + Radeon Pro 560X / 32 GB / 1 TB SSD), and it is surprisingly quick. It will drive a couple of 4k or one 5k monitors. I'm still testing it out for video rendering and it seems to be pretty capable, but it's not going to rival a serious desktop system.

Quite a laptop! I found the most important thing to have if you run Resolve 15 is a fast and capable GPU or multiple GPUs. Your processor is more than sufficient, don’t really know how your GPU stacks up.

sar104 · Dec 15, 2018

Roamer105 said:
Quite a laptop! I found the most important thing to have if you run Resolve 15 is a fast and capable GPU or multiple GPUs. Your processor is more than sufficient, don’t really know how your GPU stacks up.

Based on various GPU tasks that I've run, it's fast enough. I'll know more after further testing with Resolve.

CanadaDrone · Dec 17, 2018

Roamer105 said:
Macs have never been much in a way of speed daemons. Apple focuses on user experience and aesthetics along with reliability.

If you talk to people who repair computers for a living, reliability is not their strong point haha. Just chatting with the one in my city anyway, he jokes that Apple keeps him in business. One of the reasons for that is all too often things like proper cooling take a back seat to aesthetics. Other than that, most laptops have very similar internals with many off-the-shelf parts. I don't know that it's too much much better for anyone else though - laptops especially have higher than average failure rates as everyone is fighting to be the thinnest and lightest.

Brewbud · Dec 20, 2018

Roamer105 said:
Just did now. Pretty impressive maybe a bit uncharacteristic for Apple looking back. Not sure how satisfying it would be for grading and rendering 4K video.

My preference for this kind of activity is a workhorse desktop with a large 4K monitor coupled with at least 10 Terabytes of high speed storage and SSDs for system and temp storage.

Those numbers are good but nowhere near the fastest. The Geek Bench number they are showing is the multi-core benchmark number. Most mid to upper range gaming systems will be higher. It looks like they are comparing an 8th gen Coffee Lake with systems using Kaby Lake processors. A comparably priced mid upper range gaming laptop like the thin MSI P65 (or GS65) is in the 21K range for Geek Bench. Add a NVMe SSD and it is off to the races.