H.265 Codec: The Best Thing Since H.264

Crewscontrol by Tony Muzzatti

Earlier this summer, MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) made an announcement that they would begin the process of creating a new video compression format that was twice as efficient as current standards. The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), unofficially dubbed H.265, will work to reduce bandwidth consumption, particularly in mobile networks where spectrum is expensive. This would allow service providers to offer more video services without expanding their bandwidth.

“There is a lot of industry interest in this because it means you can halve the bit rate and still achieve the same visual quality, or double the number of television channels with the same bandwidth, which will have an enormous impact on the industry,” says Per Fröjdh, Manager for Visual Technology at Ericsson Research.

Up until now the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video has been H.264 also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC). When H.264 was initially created back in 2003 the goal was to halve or less the bit rate of its predecessors MPEG-2, H.263, and MPEG-4 Part 2 without compromising the video quality. The need for High Efficiency Video Coding has been growing exponentially over the years so it was only a matter of time before this initiative was revisited. “Video accounts for the vast majority of all data sent over networks, and that proportion is increasing: by 2015, it is predicted to account for 90 percent of all network traffic,” Fröjdh says. read more...