PORTLAND, ORE. –Elemental Technologies, supplier of video solutions for multiscreen content delivery, now supports for the high-efficiency video coding H.265 codec. With a flexible software-based architecture, these video processing solutions offer support via an upgrade. The bandwidth efficiency associated with the adoption of HEVC promises to expand delivery of high-quality, high-resolution video over bandwidth-constrained networks.
International Telecommunications Union members gave the new standard first-stage consent late last week. The codec is a result of collaboration between the ITU Video Coding Experts Group and the International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission Moving Picture Experts Group.
H.265-capable consumer devices are proliferating; according to the Multimedia Research Group, one billion such units shipped in 2012. The Cisco Visual Networking Index estimates Internet-based video consumption will grow twelvefold each year through 2016, at which point 1.2 million minutes of video content will cross the network every second. As massive amounts of video data distributed over the Internet consumes more network capacity, HEVC/H.265 offers bandwidth efficiency gains between 30 to 50 percent as compared to the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 standard. HEVC/H.265 enables content distributors to deliver higher-quality content at reduced bit rates over constrained networks while decreasing the capex spending associated with multiscreen video distribution infrastructure. With HEVC, service providers can also reduce backhaul and core network transit costs associated with multi-platform distribution.
To achieve this efficiency, the codec requires up to 10X more processing power for encoding compared to H.264 and relies on software capable of more complex decisions and tradeoffs across a wider array of decision points. Elemental has experience developing video codecs from open specifications to full implementation using general-purpose programmable architectures. Software-upgradeable solutions can incorporate new compression approaches more quickly than existing fixed hardware encoding and decoding platforms, such as digital signal processors.
“The computational intensity of HEVC lends itself perfectly to the processing performance advantage available with graphics processing units,” said Keith Wymbs, vice president of marketing at Elemental.
H.265 support will be commercially available in quarter two of 2013 on platforms, including Elemental Live and Elemental Server, and H.265 reference streams are currently available.
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