GOOGLE's competing 4K codec (VP9) could replace H.265...

[news.doddleme.com]#!

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

They should change the name, though. I can just imagine,

"Can you give me Hep C?"


www.derekmok.com

The Google presentation at the end of DeRuvo's page was 8 months ago. See the intense discussions it stimulated in a Doom9.org strand. The horserace between VP9 and HEVC (which is no longer called H.265) will be decided more by commercial matters than by visual or scientific ones. Both codecs succeed in reducing H.264's ugly artefacting, and both achieve their bandwidth savings by discarding stray (subtle) detail in favor of stark edges. Clear moving edges do satisfy movie viewers, especially those with a cartoonish mindset. You can't expect more from the very low bitrates envisioned for streaming HD video.

The Doom9.org strand contains many useful insights and references (links). Regardless of codec, for high compression, different video content/styles require different encoder strategies, and it is unlikely that encoders can be smart enough to do this themselves. So encoders must be used with great skill or else less compression done.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany