Remember those frustrating times when you were watching a video or a movie online and all of the sudden you experienced a loss of quality? Now it can be possible to stream high-quality videos in congested network environments in a faster and virtuous way. Conceived to boost video streaming, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), or H.265, is a video compression standard designed to substantially improve coding efficiency when compared to its precedent, the Advanced Video Coding (AVC), or H.264. With an increasing growth of video streaming on the Internet over popular websites such as Netflix and YouTube, and with 4K cameras gaining new ground in the market, a considerable amount of storage and bandwidth is required. HEVC promises a 50% storage reduction as its algorithm uses efficient coding by encoding video at the lowest possible bit rate while maintaining a high image quality level.

As many of us, Stream4s believes HEVC will revolutionize how video data is displayed, either online, on television and even in the surveillance industry. With this new format, image resolutions around 8192×4320 become possible to display and stream. To demonstrate the incredible power of this codec, a subjective video performance study was made between these two codecs to understand how intensely is this bit reduction. The study showed the bit reduction is inversely proportional to the video image quality, where HEVC/H.265 presented a bit reduction of 52% at 480p and 64% at 4K UHD when compared to H.264. Besides this outstanding bit reduction, when compared to H.264, HEVC/H.265 delivers a significantly better visual quality, when compressed to the same file size or bitrate.

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The following modulators all support H.264:

SKD3013 3 Channel HD Encode Modulator

SKD121X Encoding & Multiplexing Modulator

SKD2036C DVB-T And ISDB-T Encoder Modulator

SKD296X Dual HD Input Modulator With ISDB-T And DVB-T Modulation

Powerful Streaming — at what cost?

Even though HEVC is already finalized, it is still not popular. Apart from the fact that the codec is patented by various parties and it is associated with high licensing fees, HEVC/H.265 comes with the trade-off requiring almost 10x more computing power. This new technology is on standby until the hardware market adapts to it, as it happened already with H.264, launched in 2003 but only gaining popularity a few years later. Hardware manufacturers are already starting to adjust their products to support this new format to fulfill the intense market need. Even though some softwares such as VideoLAN are capable to decode such codec, software decoding, although more flexible, is not an option since hardware decoding is usually faster and saves battery life tremendously. Nevertheless, hardware still takes up valuable disc space on either the CPU or GPU.

HVEC vs H.264 — a technical comparison

Both codecs work by comparing different parts of a video frame in order to find the ones that are redundant within the subsequent frames. These areas are replaced with a short information, describing the original pixels. What differs HEVC/H.265 from H.264 is the ability to expand the size of these areas into bigger or smaller blocks, called coding tree units (CTU) in the HEVC/H.265. The pattern CTU sizes can be from 4×4 to 64×64, whilst H.264 only allows a maximum block-size of 16×16 (CTU is particular feature of HEVC). An improved CTU segmentation, as well as a better motion compensation and spatial prediction require much more signal processing capability for video compression, but has a significantly less impact on the amount of computation needed for decompression. Motion compensated prediction, another great progress in HEVC/H.265, references blocks of pixels to another area in the same frame (intra prediction) or in another frame (inter prediction).

As mentioned above, CTU are one of the HEVC’s main coding tools. Apart from this, the codec relies on paralleling processing computing techniques to make it even faster and supports advanced extensions as AVX/AVX2 and FMA3/FMA4. The individual rectangular regions that divide the image are independent and enable parallel processing. Besides, HEVC also has another feature that H.264 doesn’t possess: Wavefront Parallel Processing (WPP), a sort of decision tree that grants a more productive and effectual compression.

Several other coding tools used in H.264 are continued in this new codec, although with some slight, yet unprecedented, changes. The lossless data compression entropy coding, the Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC), is preserved in HEVC/H.265 but in a slightly upgraded version. Intra prediction is another feature that suffered significantly improvements in relation to H.264. HEVC stipulates 33 directional modes while H.264 limits them to 8 and allows DC intra prediction as well as planar prediction. An additional improvement is mainly due to the Adaptive Motion Vector Prediction, the newest method for inter prediction as it uses the picture information in a more concise way.

Thanks to the notably improvements that can be seen in this new codec, Stream4s is confident that HEVC/H.265 will become the universal standard codec, as soon as the hardware catches up.

HEVC/H.265 not only has a better visual quality at a low storage and bandwidth but also a dexterously coding algorithm by encoding motion vectors with much greater precision and minimal residual errors. Besides the preeminent method used for inter prediction, this new codec also presents an improved deblocking filter and sample adaptive offset to reduce even more artifacts.

Established in 2000, the Soukacatv.com main products are modulators both in analog and digital ones, amplifier and combiner. We are the very first one in manufacturing the headend system in China. Our 16 in 1 and 24 in 1 now are the most popular products all over the world.

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Source:medium by Ana Rodrigues

The H.264 video compression standard , also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding, MPEG-4 AVC or AVC video, is an industry standard for video compression that is one of the most frequently used video formats nowadays.

H.264 touches every aspect of our digital lives and the popularity of H.264 continues to grow. You see this codec for example with HD DVDs, HDTV, pay-TV or YouTube videos. And H.264 isn't just limited to consumer electronics. It's also pervasive in business.

It's estimated that by 2025, most conventional video distribution solutions using HDBaseT or other proprietary transmission methods will be replaced by more flexible IP-based systems, as the popularity of H.264 continues to grow.

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What is H.264?

H.264 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is a video coding format for recording and distributing full HD video and audio. It was developed and maintained by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) with the ISO/IEC JTC1 Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

Commonly used for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content, the H.264 format is a network-friendly video transmission method that delivers high-quality images without being a bandwidth hog.

Encoding and Decoding H.264

H.264 works by encoding (converting) HDMI (HD) audio and video signals into an IP stream that can be transmitted over an IP network. On the other end, a decoder converts the signals back to an uncompressed HDMI format. What makes H.264 so versatile is that you can stream video from an encoder to multiple decoders simultaneously. For instance, you can stream one set of video signals to a display, a video wall and a digital signage system all at the same time. Find out more about our HDMI over IP Distribution solution.

H.264 applications - When and Where to use ?

The H.264 video compression format is perfect for AV distribution to one or more video sources (multicasting streams for many displays). Its use can be specially adequate for long-distance transmission of signals using existing wires and infrastructure. It is fast becoming the standard video compression format for the video surveillance world, for example.

It applications can range from outside broadcast (OB vans), energy sector, education, transportation drone video recording for environmental monitoring use as well as Video Wall Processing, Digital Signage Solutions and video conferencing.

DVB-T And ISDB-T Encoder Modulator(H.264 )

H.265 vs H.264

H.265, the younger sibling of H.264, is a format also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and MPEG-H Part 2. Compared to H.264, H.265 offers up to twice the data compression with the same level of video quality. It is designed to support future resolutions up to 8K UHD (8192x4320) compared to the 4K (4092x2160) that the H.264 supports. Some newer equipment such as TV’s are starting to ship with a built in hardware decoder to play H.265 content, but the improved quality and reduced bandwidth comes at a cost. H.265 encoding and decoding requires much more processing power over H.264 so the cost of H.265 solutions are still significantly higher.

H.264 vs MPEG-2

Compared to MPEG-2, H.264 has:

· Better remote viewing quality at the same compressed bit rate than MPEG-2

· 30-50% lower bitrate

· uses up to 50 percent less bandwidth

· H.264 is more adequate for broadcast-oriented technology

Benefits of using H.264 Encoders and Decoders

· Low bandwidth usage and higher resolution monitoring.
H.264 was created to provide high-quality transmission of full-motion video with lower bandwidth requirements and lower latency traditional video standards, such as MPEG-2. H.264 uses a very efficient codec that provides high-quality images and uses a minimal amount of bandwidth.

· H.264 bitrate is lower than other formats
H.264 has an 80% lower bitrate than Motion JPEG video. It's estimated the bitrate savings can be as much as 50% or more compared to MPEG-2. For example, H.264 can provide a better image quality at the same compressed bit rate. At a lower bit rate, it provides the same image quality.

· Reduced demands for video storage
H.264 uses significantly less storage to store video compared to other standards which proves to be essential to allow easy video transmission through IP

· Vendor agnostic video extension solution
Because H.264 video is standards-based, it provides a vendor agnostic video extension solution. Users can mix and match H.264 equipment from different vendors without worry of any compatibility or proprietary issues.