Storing videos requires a lot of storage space. To achieve this manageability, video compression technology was developed to compress video, also known as codecs. In 2003, the codec H.264 (commercially known as AVC) was released. It is now the industry standard for video compression because it provides good compression and can be played on almost any device and platform. All modern browsers, operating systems, and mobile platforms support H.264.

H.265 / HEVC

After a decade of development in the IT industry, a successor to H.264 was released in 2012 as H.265 (commercially known as HEVC). HEVC promises a dramatic 50% bandwidth reduction for the same video quality. Significant savings in storage and bandwidth usage mean you can install 5IP security cameras in your previous location, up to 10 with h.265.

Although H.265 was released about five years ago, adoption has been slow. The main reason for this is that unlike H.264, which has one patent pool, H.265 has three patent pools with different pricing structures and terms and conditions. The second patent pool (HEVC Advance) was launched in 2015, three years after its launch. This ambiguity about the royalty situation around H.265 has hampered adoption, so major browsers are not supported at all (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) or only partially supported (Edge). As a result, many content providers stick with H.264 because at least they know it will always play.

AV1

The Open Media Alliance was launched in 2015 by several large IT companies, including Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Cisco, with the aim of creating an open royalty-free codec called AV1. Based on Google’s open ‘VP10’ codec, using Cisco ‘Thor’ and Mozilla’s ‘Daala’ codec technology, the consortium will create an alternative to H.265. The codec is a strong competitor to H.265 for several reasons:

  • Royalty-free AV1 is completely royalty-free, meaning there are no royalty payments to any patent pools. Google has proven it can release a royalty-free VP9 codec. In addition, the codec will be open source with a very loose BSD license for accelerated adoption.
  • Better compression Depending on the benchmark you use, AV1 will be about 30% better than H.265 / HEVC. Again significant improvement at reasonable CPU cost. AV1 will also display these improvements on low bit rate cameras compared to HEVC, which is especially useful for IP security cameras.
  • With APPLE, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT and MOZILLA supporting AV1 everywhere, we can expect support for all major browsers and operating systems in the near future. With this new codec, h.265 support in major browsers is unlikely to occur. Unlike H.265, AV1 support is available in development versions of Firefox.
  • Hardware-accelerated decoding of video requires a lot of CPU. Many devices, such as laptops, phones or tablets, have hardware acceleration features to prevent heating devices and battery depletion. AV1 is supported by major chip vendors such as INTEL, AMD, BROADCOM and ARM. It will be at least a year before we see the first devices shipped with AV1, but hardware support looks promising.
  • Content providers support AV1 Major content providers such as NETFLIX, FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, BBC, AMAZON and HULU will offer AV1 content. Youtube has resisted HEVC by offering 4K video with its VP9 codec. As a result, it does not currently play on Apple devices.

How will AV1 affect the video surveillance industry?

Manufacturers of IP security cameras are now slowly adopting H.265 in their security cameras, but there are still problems playing video on mobile devices and in browsers. The solution is to transcode the video from H.265 to another format, but this has major disadvantages:

  • Transcoding means unzipping the video and rezipping it in a different format. This usually takes time and is accompanied by ** “encoding delay” **. As a result, your live video is not as live as you might expect.
  • Transcoding requires a lot of CPU, and you can only transcode several video streams simultaneously. This increases the cost of any video surveillance platform, whether cloud or traditional video recorders.
  • Transcoding degrades video quality. Codecs compress video by discarding video data and, once deleted, cannot be recovered again. Each time the video is compressed, the codec dismisses the video data, resulting in degraded quality.
  • To prevent transcoding, it’s important that people use security cameras and devices that support the same codecs. Now with HEVC, cameras are starting to support it, but popular customer devices still lack support.

With AV1, most platforms can quickly add support (Firefox is already in development). The question is: When will we see the first IP security cameras supporting it?

It is unclear whether h.265 or AV1 will be the next industry standard. Obviously, when one of the two becomes dominant, we will support it.

Original source: www.een.com/h-265/

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