How and When to Add H.265 to a Publishing Workflow
For publishers who have been hearing a lot about the benefits of HEVC/H.265, the question is when is the time to begin supporting it? Addressing frequently asked questions on H.265, StreamingMedia.com contributor Jan Ozer gave a helpful presentation at the recent Streaming Forum in London. One thing few people are mentioning, for example, is the issue of royalty payments.
"What's holding things up?" Ozer asked. "What's the elephant in the room nobody's talking about? Just like H.264 had a royalty, HEVC is going to have a royalty."
While that royalty wasn't known when Ozer gave his talk, he showed how the entire introduction of H.265 is moving along much faster than that of H.264.
"I put this timeline up here because I wanted people to see how accelerated the rollout of HEVC is. We're talking about HEVC as if it's here now today," Ozer said. "With H.264, the spec was approved in March, 2003; royalties were announced seven months later. So, seven months after the spec was approved, anybody who wanted to use H.264 knew what it was going to cost. When Apple introduced QuickTime with H.264, it was a year-and-a-half years after royalties were announced. When Adobe came out with Flash in March, 2008, it was five years after royalties were announced. When Microsoft put H.264 playback in Silverlight, it was six years. So now we're talking about HEVC, it's June, so we're five months after the product was standardized, we're talking about rolling out HEVC. We're very much more accelerated compared to where we were with H.264."
For answers to any other H.265 questions, watch the full presentation below.
How (and When) to Incorporate H.265 into Your Publishing Workflows
Reports say that H.265 gives equivalent quality to H.264 at 50% of the data rate, reduces bandwidth costs, and enables higher quality streams and 4K videos. But an H.265 infrastructure must be established, and there is a royalty issue. This session reviews the current state of H.265 – how should it be incorporated into publishing workflows?
Jan Ozer, Principal, Doceo Publishing — USA