Streaming internet video is the future. It is predicted that for the next four years, the amount of internet-based video consumption will increase twelve times until the collective populace of the Internet is moving 1.2 million minutes of video every second. Fortunately, for all of the fans of high quality video, Elemental Technologies, a supplier of video solutions that focuses on multiscreen content, announced today that it will support the new HEVC (high-efficiency video coding) H.265 codec. The codec will be available through software upgrades.
The next-generation codec received the green light from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) last week. HVEC/H.265 is the brainchild of both the ITU Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO (International Standards Organization)/IEC (News - Alert) Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). There are many consumer devices that support H.265 already on the market, and the Multimedia Research Group estimates that one-billion such units shipped in 2012.
HVEC/H.265 has a number of benefits for internet users and ISPs. First, it uses less bandwidth, resulting in 30 to 50 percent gains in efficiency when compared to the previous standard: MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. It will enable content distributors of all varieties to deliver high-quality content over busy networks. Core transit costs associated with multi-platform video distribution will be reduced.
While HVEC/H.265 offers many benefits, they do come at a cost: up to ten times more processing power is required to run the codec compared to older standards. This is due to the software's ability to make complex decisions at multiple parts of the encoding process. Elemental has significant experience in working with and developing codecs, and is expected to fully realize the codec for many types of existing computer architectures.
Elemental will hold a live webinar on February 7th at 11:00 AM PST for an overview of the HEVC/H.265 codec. Registration is available here.
Edited by Ashley Caputo
