New codec coming - H.266

Northwood Mediaworks · Jul 7, 2020

New H.266 codec uses half the data to stream 4K video

Fraunhofer, the German company that helped develop the H.264, H.265 and MP3 encoding formats, has unveiled a new video encoding standard that could severely reduce streaming bottlenecks. Called H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC), it’s specifically designed for 4K and 8K streaming and reduces...

www.engadget.com

brett8883 · Jul 7, 2020

Northwood Mediaworks said:
New H.266 codec uses half the data to stream 4K video

Fraunhofer, the German company that helped develop the H.264, H.265 and MP3 encoding formats, has unveiled a new video encoding standard that could severely reduce streaming bottlenecks. Called H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC), it’s specifically designed for 4K and 8K streaming and reduces...

www.engadget.com

Well great now I’ll have to get another new computer...

dawgpilot · Jul 7, 2020

Requires 10x the CPU power to encode compared to h265, so it's going to be a while before we see this deployed anywhere.

Northwood Mediaworks · Jul 7, 2020

Ya, its very much vaporware at this point. The hardware to support it is not even out there with manufacturers, but I posted the info as its good to know what's coming down the pipe eventually. Probably sparks a glimmer of hope into those people who bought into the 8k drone thing.

fGene · Jul 7, 2020

dawgpilot said:
Requires 10x the CPU power to encode compared to h265, so it's going to be a while before we see this deployed anywhere.

Approximately 3.5 years if Moore's law still stands. I believe the most time-consuming part is to make the new codec an official standard.

Dave Maine · Jul 8, 2020

It is unlikely that any current drone can use this codec. The 10x increase in computing power required to achieve it isn’t there in all probability.

h.265 is still very much a work in progress years after it’s introduction, obsoleting many computers.

fGene · Jul 8, 2020

Dave Maine said:
It is unlikely that any current drone can use this codec. The 10x increase in computing power required to achieve it isn’t there in all probability.

Since most drones use hardware encoder chips with very limited programming, the problem is that they're not just speed limited, but lack features required to accelerate new algorithms. I'm not sure how that 10x figure is calculated, it probably applies to general-purpose CPUs/GPUs which are usually orders of magnitude slower than dedicated hardware. Once the standard is established we are likely to see a new generation of hardware encoding chips pretty soon after, first in high-end cameras, then in drones.

SkyeHigh · Jul 8, 2020

fGene said:
Since most drones use hardware encoder chips with very limited programming, the problem is that they're not just speed limited, but lack features required to accelerate new algorithms. I'm not sure how that 10x figure is calculated, it probably applies to general-purpose CPUs/GPUs which are usually orders of magnitude slower than dedicated hardware. Once the standard is established we are likely to see a new generation of hardware encoding chips pretty soon after, first in high-end cameras, then in drones.

H.266 (now ratified as a standard, as of 6th July) is expected to be ‘potentially’ up to 10x the encoding complexity of H.265. The decoding is a far less intensive process approximately twice that of H.265.

Hardware-based devices using FPGA’s will most likely be the first to the mainstream market but hardware like this that can process in real-time rarely achieve the highest quality video that can be achieved - the best being multi-pass systems that optimise the video.

You can guarantee Nvidia will already have a working H.266 codec but will require some serious GPU power for a desktop video editor to handle it in real-time.

fGene · Jul 8, 2020

SkyeHigh said:
H.266 (now ratified as a standard, as of 6th July)

Somehow I missed that part. This is really good news.

SkyeHigh said:
is expected to be ‘potentially’ up to 10x the encoding complexity of H.265. The decoding is a far less intensive process approximately twice that of H.265.

Hardware-based devices using FPGA’s will most likely be the first to the mainstream market but hardware like this that can process in real-time rarely achieve the highest quality video that can be achieved - the best being multi-pass systems that optimise the video.

You can guarantee Nvidia will already have a working H.266 codec but will require some serious GPU power for a desktop video editor to handle it in real-time.

I think even current high end programmable desktop GPU like 2080 rtx might be capable of handling stream decoding in real time (it has flexible enough architecture and power to spare when decoding H.265 even at 8k), the next generation is likely to support encoding as well, though maybe at lower resolutions only at first. And in a few years we will have dedicated low-power hardware encoders that could be installed in drones. At least that's what happened with previous formats. Meanwhile we can sit and wait enjoying H.265 which is still relatively new and great compared to H.264.

SkyeHigh · Jul 8, 2020

fGene said:
Somehow I missed that part. This is really good news.

I think even current high end programmable desktop GPU like 2080 rtx might be capable of handling stream decoding in real time (it has flexible enough architecture and power to spare when decoding H.265 even at 8k), the next generation is likely to support encoding as well, though maybe at lower resolutions only at first. And in a few years we will have dedicated low-power hardware encoders that could be installed in drones. At least that's what happened with previous formats. Meanwhile we can sit and wait enjoying H.265 which is still relatively new and great compared to H.264.

There will still be a problem with heat generated by not just the onboard video processing but also the camera. As pixel density increases so does the bit rate at which the data has to pass through the processing pipeline. The power required to process is directly related to the bit rate. The sooner room temperature Super Conductors are a practical reality the better!

As an aside, another issue with ever higher pixel count and pixel density is the lens. At these high image resolutions, every flaw in optical lenses becomes harder to overcome.