MUNICH, Germany—Cinegy has released the latest version of its Cinecoder video codec software-development kit (SDK), which addresses a problem that’s faced the TV and broadcast industries since NVIDIA ended H.264 interlace support.

For years, software developers and solutions vendors have used the H.264 encoding capabilities of NVIDIA GPUs, which became a cornerstone of many media industry solutions, the company said.

With NVIDIA’s introduction of the Turing series of GPUs, the company ended H.264 interlace support. While this initially caused issues, the availability of the previous Pascal generation of NVIDIA cards made the situation manageable, Cinegy said.

However, Pascal-based hardware availability has now ended, and these cards no longer receive NVIDIA driver updates, significantly impacting many broadcast workflows.

Cinegy's latest Cinecoder SDK version 4.22 addresses the situation by enabling interlace H.264 encoding using Turing, Ampere and Ada Lovelace (current) generation NVIDIA GPU cards. This development benefits the broadcast and Media & Entertainment industries, which still deliver most of their content in this format, it said.

Current generation NVIDIA cards now offer higher performance, increased encoding throughput and improved energy efficiency, while newer cloud instances provide better value for money with up-to-date NVIDIA drivers, it said.

"This is a great achievement and at the same time a huge relief to all of us," Cinegy Chief Technology Officer Jan Weigner said. "Our customers were really struggling to find a solution, especially after the driver support for the Pascal-based cards ended. Now new NVIDIA cards can be used for H.264 interlace encoding, achieving much better performance. Also, when looking at cloud deployments, we do not have to limit ourselves to using AWS G3 instances, which were the AWS instances with Pascal series GPUs."

Benchmarks using standard test clips show that the Cinecoder interlace H.264 encoder for NVIDIA GPUs creates the same or better-quality output than the original NVIDIA Pascal series hardware encoder, the company said.

The encode performance of Ada Lovelace-based NVIDIA GPUs, the current NVIDIA generation, is around 500 frames per second (FPS) for H.264 1080i per NVENC encoder unit. This means that cards with two NVENC units, such as the RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 (or their professional counterparts like the RTX 4000 ADA and up), can encode around 1000 FPS, Cinegy said.

Cinegy's Cinecoder SDK can be licensed specifically for enabling NVIDIA GPU H.264 interlace encoding or for all additional encoding, decoding and media handling features. It is also home to Cinegy's proprietary Daniel2 codec, offering more than 10,000 FPS 4K encode and 30,000 FPS 4K decode capabilities, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

A new report from mobile and video technology research company InterDigital spotlights Versatile Video Coding (VVC/H.266) as a standout video codec with a highly versatile design for use across an extended range of applications and capabilities far exceeding those of previous standards.

VVC/H.266 offers an up to 50% bit-rate reduction over its predecessor HEVC/H.265 and boasts enhanced capabilities to efficiently transmit ultra-high-definition content, from 4K and 8K video to high dynamic range (HDR) content and 360° and immersive video formats, said the report.

The report, titled "The Evolution of Compression in a Video-First Economy," was written by Futuresource Consulting and outlines the development path of video compression codecs that have proven to be critical in reducing bandwidth and improving efficiency in the delivery of the data dense video services and entertainment.

Providing a 360-degree view of the video compression ecosystem, the report details the landscape of video compression technology and history of video coding standards, alongside the advantages of today’s codecs for video-powered experiences and potential impact for the future.

Streaming a two-hour movie without compression would require more than 1.3TB of data, states the report, but the evolution of video compression techniques over the last 40 years now supports the seamless delivery of increased volumes of new types of video content and IP-based streaming services.

The report cites the broad transformational impact of video codecs, from state-of-the-art codecs enabling the delivery of ultra-high-definition content on IP-based streaming services, to innovation in compression techniques and AI integration reducing the computational load and latency to support immersive video applications like VR and AR, and the ability for video codecs to not only reduce storage and bandwidth but also use energy more sustainably.

“Video dominates internet traffic today, with over 3.5 billion internet users streaming or downloading some form of video at least once per month. Furthermore, there were 1.47 billion SVoD subscriptions globally at the close of 2022, with the sector posting a 12% increase in subscriber numbers year over year,” said Simon Forrest, principal technology analyst, Futuresource Consulting.

“The applications for video are expanding. Consumers spent around 11% of their time watching content from video sharing sites in 2022, up only 0.6% year over year, yet time spent viewing videos posted on social media increased by 24% over the same period. The research confirms that the industry requirement to utilize more efficient codecs is intensifying.”

The full report is available to download here.

Few could argue that MPEG-2 has not been a workhorse of professional media compression. Created in 1988, it helped to power the commercial success of DVD disc players and is still used daily by U.S. TV broadcasters as a vital –and mandated—part of their DTV transmission service.

But what if I told you H.264 Advanced Video Compression (AVC) will have a run that matches or exceeds that of MPEG-2? One that ensures AVC will be with us for the rest of our adult lives?

Perhaps, you are raising an eyebrow, smirking skeptically or simply saying to yourself “No way!” But keep an open mind and consider these three reasons why H.264 compression will be with us for a long, long time.

No. 1: Hitting the sweet spot. When you consider factors like processing power and cost, it’s hard to beat H.264 encoding. Sure, H.265, or High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), outshines AVC in terms of pure apples-to-apples compression.

A BBC Research & Development blog posting, “H.265/HEVC vs H.264/AVC: 50% Bit Savings Verified,” makes the case for HEVC in the title. The posting discusses subjective comparison testing of the two compression standards based on international recommendations for assessment of video quality.

“The overall average bit rate saving achieved by HEVC compared to AVC of the same subjective quality was found to be 59% as supposed to the 44% gain show with objective quality metrics,” the blog says. It also notes that bit rate savings were greater for larger picture sizes.

While impressive, the blog doesn’t address the cost of encoding. At this point in time, it’s not out of the ordinary for a professional quality HEVC encoder to cost four times as much as a comparable AVC encoder. Although HEVC encoders will likely drop in price with time, as do the vast majority of electronics, so too will AVC encoders.

Thus, in terms of bang for the buck, H.264 encoding occupies, and likely will continue to occupy, the compression sweet spot for a very long time.

No 2: Changing viewing habits. No one could argue that TV viewing hasn’t undergone a major transition. While the living room TV remains important, people now enthusiastically watch television, streaming entertainment and movies on their phones, tablets and laptops—something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

Helping to fuel this transition is H.264 compression. Equally adept at powering video streaming on a Raspberry Pi-based IoT device, an iOS platform or Android device, H.264 unlocks a world of possibilities for reaching people with video where they want to consume it.

Further, because of its flexibility, H.264 can be used to simultaneously stream a high school or college basketball game at 360p or 480p while encoding a 720p or 1080p version to be edited later and uploaded to a YouTube channel.

Not only has H.264 evolved into a web delivery format, it is widely used in high-end cameras as one of many supported output formats. It’s also the fuel powering a variety of affordable, yet-powerful production setups used to produce everything from corporate and government events to video game tournaments and club sports—all of which nurture changing consumer viewing habits.

No. 3: Archiving. Perhaps the biggest reason H.264 will remain relevant for decades is its role as an archival format. It’s widespread use for archiving by universities alone ensures H.264 will be around a long time. But it’s also widely used for first-time digitization of content to be archived outside of academia.

All of that HD content shot over the past 20 years –whether 1080i or 1080p— is going to be with us for the rest of our lives regardless of the growing adoption of 4K and maybe 8K. As long as it is, H.264 will remain a vital compression format to archive that content, assuring its longevity one day will challenge and likely surpass that of MPEG-2 as a workhorse compression format.