H.265 on Premiere?

chromeboy007

chromeboy007

Well-known member
Hey, I have been hearing H.265 for a while now but didn't know when Premiere or anyone else would have it as one of their codecs. I was just searching for the VLC link to download the player for a client just now and came across this:

http://www.videolan.org/developers/x265.html

So.... can we take advantage of this and use it now?
 
chromeboy007 said:
So.... can we take advantage of this and use it now?
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Bear in mind that's just a library and command-line encoder... no Premiere integration or anything like that.

It's still pretty early days for the format, too; not many things can play it. In particular, phones and tablets need decoders in hardware to do it well; right now, they don't support H.265. Maybe fall this year, more likely next year.
 
Are they? Surely not... We don't have hardware decoding for H265 yet; they'll play fine enough if you have a reasonably beefy CPU, but skipping to a different point in a video, in my experience, takes literally about 30 seconds. Like 4K, we are not ready for H265 yet, and will not be for at least another year or two. At LEAST.
 
I know the chip manufacturers had H.265 hardware decode on their radar a couple of years ago (because I was speaking to them about it). So it's in the pipeline, but the lead times for that stuff are long... like I said, this should reach consumer products fall this year maybe, next year more likely.
 
AtticusLake said:
I know the chip manufacturers had H.265 hardware decode on their radar a couple of years ago (because I was speaking to them about it). So it's in the pipeline, but the lead times for that stuff are long... like I said, this should reach consumer products fall this year maybe, next year more likely.
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I'm not sure what is meant by that. So do CPU's need certain things to be able to write (and read) files with H265? I have always been under the impression that codecs are just scripts that you can install onto your NLE, like how we can can install Avid's codecs onto Premiere with a few clicks.

I just don't know enough about software development....
 
Software decoders, generally speaking, are not as fast at decoding as hardware decoders, for any codec. Also, by definition, software relies on the processing power of whatever device it's installed on, which means that the decoding process has to be shared with whatever else is going on in there. This can lead to giant slowdowns, like what happened to all of us when we started editing h.264 off our DSLRs instead of the less efficient but easier to read mpeg2 family.
 
Finn Yarbrough said:
Software decoders, generally speaking, are not as fast at decoding as hardware decoders, for any codec. Also, by definition, software relies on the processing power of whatever device it's installed on, which means that the decoding process has to be shared with whatever else is going on in there. This can lead to giant slowdowns, like what happened to all of us when we started editing h.264 off our DSLRs instead of the less efficient but easier to read mpeg2 family.
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I'm more interested in being able to export files in H265 then to edit footage compressed with H265. Regardless, so it is just a matter of computer power?
 
chromeboy007 said:
I'm more interested in being able to export files in H265 then to edit footage compressed with H265.
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To do that easily, you will need an H.265 software codec, integrated into PP. Right now I think the codec exists, but there's no integration; so to use it with PP is going to be awkward at best.

But the point is, why are you exporting H.265? If it's for your own use, then I guess go for it. If it's for wider distribution, then you need to know if your viewers can actually watch H.265 yet, and it's pretty early days for that.

Mobile devices, in particular, need hardware decoders to play movies. Although theoretically a software decoder can do exactly the same job, it's a LOT of processing. A mobile's CPU is pretty feeble to do that work in software, and they have very limited battery life. A hardware decoder takes the load off and helps a lot with both speed and battery life.
 
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