H.265 Spec Draft Expected in February

H.265

It seemed like everyone had finally settled down on H.264, in all its myriad flavors, as the video compression standard of choice, and now comes word that work on H.265 is starting to come together. Admittedly, its not much a surprise. Standards bodies need something to keep themselves busy and processor manufacturers are sure to appreciate a new application to push computing needs. With more than a dozen versions of H.264 approved over the last ten years, it has been a remarkably flexible set of standards. H.265 will be designed from the beginning to support resolutions ranging from the smartphone-friendly QVGA (320×240) all the way up to the recently approved Ultra High-Definition Television resolution of 7680×4320.

 According to Multichannel News, an initial draft of the new spec should be ready in February, with a completed standard due in January 2013.

The H.265 codec is expected to decrease the bandwidth needed to deliver video by 25% to 50%. The bandwidth savings come at a cost of increased processing complexity, but the benefits, particularly for mobile operators, make the cost worthwhile.

Zatz Not Funny!

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  • bimmerfreak0
    October 18, 2011 2:31 pm

    Oh joy, another slew of

    Oh joy, another slew of equipment to roll out in the upcoming years Money Mouth

    • millpub
      October 18, 2011 2:58 pm

       That was pretty much my

      Laughing That was pretty much my initial reaction reading about it. However, I will say that if they can plan for the wide range of encoding possibilities from the start and avoid a lot of the main profile/high profile, this version is slightly different than that version messiness of H.264, it might be worth it.

      • Aaron Ledger
        October 18, 2011 3:42 pm

        I doubt that there will be a

        I doubt that there will be a single profile. Multiple profiles are needed to bring flexibility so that tradeoffs can be made WRT performance, computational complexity and practical needs for the application. This has always been the case with MPEG encoding even going back to MPEG-2.

        • millpub
          October 18, 2011 4:09 pm

          True enough, but the

          True enough, but the incompatibilities that pop up with H.264 playback often occur because of encoders/decoders based on different versions of H.264 that arose specifically because of changes made to address new resolutions or chroma formats.  Most of those changes and compromises arose because of the rapid progression in display, storage, and computational technology. Obviously things will continue to change over time, but H.265 will come into being during a period a relative stability in display standards and with less constrained and better defined processor capabilities, so hopefully we won’t see the same issues where a High Profile file plays fine on one device but not another simply because the decoder is targeting a different version than the encoder was using.

          Of course, I like to dream big.Wink