High Efficiency Video Codec supports 4K "UltraHD" video - and perhaps 8K and video industry can convince buyers that the pixels are much trouble. Perhaps more important, given the number of people watching videos online these days, it doubles the video quality for a given data network capacity.
HEVC has the potential to spread very widely indeed. It is the successor of the Advanced Video Codec (AVC), H.264 alias, used in video cameras, TV, Blu-ray, streaming online video and more. Codecs are the technology used to encode and decode the video and audio for transmission and storage more efficient.
To start, HEVC comes in two versions, the "main profile" for normal video, which supports data 8-bit color, and the "Main Profile 10" with a 10-bit video for high-end uses . In addition to this, the standard supports a still image format.
HEVC draft specifications described its use to a resolution of 7680 x4, 320 pixels. 33 million pixel image is hardly necessary in the short term, but the video and film industries are inching closer to 4K resolution video images with more than 8 million pixels. Better use of bandwidth HEVC is designed to allow higher resolutions without disabling networks and storage systems stuff. More work HEVC prepares for Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Displacement, which represents two groups of standardization, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which produced HEVC / H.265 and AVC / H. 264.
New video uses
First HEVC are extensions that store information standard color with more full-color format 4:04:04 ET horizontally subsampled 4:2:2 format, which preserves more information the color used 4:2:0 format in the first incarnation. These extensions will also support color data "up to 12 bits and beyond," said ISO.
Secondly, another set of extensions will HEVC and multiview 3D video.
Color, 3D and Multiview extensions will be in January 2014, the ISO said.
Potentially unpleasant aspect of technology, however, is that, as H.264 is encumbered by patents, which could mean fees for those who use the technology. These payments are common for devices such as cameras and computers, but the web standards groups avoid toll payment patents on the core technology such as putting video on the web. That's why Google has released its VP8 codec free within the WebM project and probably why it works on VP9. In contrast, ISO patent policy, which is shared with ITU object doens't patents. Instead, it requires organizations to patents that relate to standards for royalty free unlicensed or "on a non-discriminatory basis on reasonable terms and conditions." This policy is also called RAND, short for reasonable and non-discriminatory, which means for example that a company can not refuse to license the technology to a rival.
According to the list of ISO statements patents, companies said they have patents that cover HEVC (formally known as ISO / IEC 23008-2 to ISO) include Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm , Research in Motion, Huawei, Thomson Licensing, and NTT DoCoMo.
It is not clear whether VP8 and VP9 future patent pending. The group which licenses patents for MPEG pools, called MPEG LA, said that 12 bodies have declared they hold patents essential to VP8 use, but so far, MPEG LA has not offered a license to VP8 patent pool even address the issue of more than two and a half years.
Google VP9
Google has started looking into VP9 seriously in the third quarter of 2011, according to a Google presentation on "VP-Next" (PDF), aka Next-Generation Open Video (PDF), or Ngov. Google is well aware of its competitors. VP9 a goal is to "further reduce rates of at least 10 to 20 percent to go before HEVC," said Adrian Barn Media Group in Google Chrome, in a presentation.
And as with HEVC, support for higher resolution is central. "HD is the new sweet spot," said Grange.
To get there, Google is not starting from scratch. "This is an evolutionary development of VP8, not a whole new paradigm," Google said in another presentation.
In another presentation on Ngov, a priority is to halve the need for network bandwidth with a given image quality. Another priority is to do with a video decoder which is only 40 percent more complex. Greater decoding complexity translates requests processing heavier and therefore the use of power, the major constraints in the era of smartphones and tablets.
Although Google leads the work VP9, he is not alone. An element of the technology, called asymmetric discrete sine transform (PDF), is being developed as part of a collaboration with researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
