A video with a 4320p (7680×4320) playback option has appeared on YouTube. According to the video description for "Ghost Towns in 8K", it was "Filmed on the RED Epic Dragon 6K in Portrait orientation and then stitched together in Adobe After Effects. Some shots simply scaled up by 125% from 6.1K to meet the 7.6K standard."
Very few people on the planet will be capable of playing the upscaled video in its full glory. The NHK and Panasonic plan to trial 8K broadcasting during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Perhaps YouTube should add an intermediate 5K (5120×2880) option for Apple and Dell users.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:51PM
What is the resolution of reality? When will it be enough or become better then life? I thought it was ok before to get tv episodes in 240, 360, 420 etc. They looked good. Now I mostly watch the 720 once, it looks better (i think), i have yet to go 1080 and beyond. Seems like a massive space-waste to quality ratio. One can apparently get porn in 4k already; which seems like a recipe for things that can't be unseen. When is it enough?
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:53PM
It's like no matter the resolution of a boring and pointless TV-drama.. it's still worthless waste no matter the technical quality. To motivate an upgrade in equipment there better be something worthwhile to watch. And without content oligarchs trying to micromanage what software and hardware setup one may use to take part of said content.
On a technical note there's a finite number of optical nerve sensors on a given angle range. So if you know the distance to the screen. It's possible to calculate the maximum useful resolution. Otoh, there's no screen capable of controlling the vector of emitted photons yet so there's plenty of room for improvement.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:10PM
720p is a good minimum for the TV or laptop. You can find some small H.265 720p rips now. 480p is dead.
4K and above are good choices for theaters or future VR following Oculus Rift. The Oculus Rift version shipping in March 2016 has a resolution of 2160×1200 (1080×1200 per eye). Many flagship smartphones and phablets have 2560×1440 resolution and could be slipped into Cardboard [google.com] for VR. Some of these phones could have a 3840×2160 screen and 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM within the next 2 years.
Most people getting a new TV in a few years will pick up a 4K set. They are already cheaper than $1000 for the smaller sizes. ~$1300 for a 60 inch.
How could TV manufacturers push 8K? Really large and thin TV sets. Curved TVs will give way to bendy wallpaper thin TVs. They could become cheaper to make and ship, and if they are really large (above 100 inches [amazon.com]) then 8K might be desirable.
http://www.swift.ac.uk/about/files/vision.pdf [swift.ac.uk]
http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-viewing-distance-to-screen-size/ [engadget.com]
Aside from resolution, there's also color depth and FPS to consider. Rift and other VR companies are aiming for 90-120 FPS. YouTube added 60 FPS capabilities recently.
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(Score: 1) by bitrotRnotbitrot on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:30PM
480p is dead.
I wouldn't say that just yet, I'm using 480p more than anything these days. My connection has been rubbish for months and 480 is a lifesaver for small size with decent image quality (provided you use a good source).
I had been using 720p as my lowest baseline previously, hopefully will again soon. In the meantime though there are good sources for 480 that are still very popular. I guess there will always be plenty of people in my current situation that rely somewhat on lower data throughput.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:46PM
That's too bad but H.265 has definitely helped the situation. 45-50 minutes can comfortably fit into a 150-250 MB file.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 13 2015, @11:38PM
How does H.264 vs H.265 compare quality wise during same input format and output filesize?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 14 2015, @04:17PM
https://sonnati.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/h265-part-ii-considerations-on-quality-and-state-of-the-art/ [wordpress.com]
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/162027-h-265-benchmarked-does-the-next-generation-video-codec-live-up-to-expectations/2 [extremetech.com] (page 2)
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/286-latest-industry-news/1528750-comparing-mpeg-2-h-264-h-265-video-codecs-nab-2014-a.html [avsforum.com]
http://vcodex.blogspot.com/2013/04/comparing-hevc-and-h264-quality-using.html [blogspot.com]
http://vanguardvideo.com/blog/evaluating-h-265hevc-video-quality-why-you-need-vct-visual-comparison-tool-for-subjective-testing/ [vanguardvideo.com]
http://files.linuxsystems.it/functions/comparison.php?source=hobbit_1&bitrate1=756&codec1=x265-0.7-259-5e2043f89aa1-8bpp-placebo&bitrate2=756&codec2=x264-0.142.2389-956c8d8-8bpp-placebo&n=14¤t=1 [ linuxsystems.it (Warning: Unicode in URL) ]
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:27PM
Well thanks ;-)
H265 – part II : Considerations on quality and “state-of-the-art” [wordpress.com]
H.265 benchmarked: Does the next-generation video codec live up to expectations? [extremetech.com]
Comparing MPEG-2, H.264, and H.265 Video Codecs at NAB 2014 [avsforum.com]
And the diagram seems to suggest a minimum bitrate of 300 kbit/s for H.265.
Comparing HEVC and H.264 quality: see for yourself [blogspot.com]
GPAC player [mines-telecom.fr]
Evaluating H.265/HEVC Video Quality: Why You Need VCT (Visual Comparison Tool) to Help with Subjective Testing [vanguardvideo.com]
Screenshot comparator [ linuxsystems.it (Warning: Unicode in URL) ]
So it seems H.265 is a lot better than H.264 and the minimum bitrate is 300 kbit/s but it also uses 5-10 times as much computing power so perhaps a 20 GHz CPU is needed but there's multi-core to save the day and then OpenCL upon that.
h265 software decoding, hardware requirements [openelec.tv]
So Intel core i3 seems sufficient for present needs.
But Intel dual core at 2.2 GHz seems to be on the limit. Thus number of cores or something may be the key.
The best HTPC platform for the future: video quality tested of current CPUs and GPUs [hardware.info]
BBB - AVC 2160p30 seems to work on Intel core i3 but the joker is GPU/video drivers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:23PM
New Intel/AMD/ARM CPUs and GPUs have hardware support for H.265 (and maybe VP9) decode.
I can decode H.265 720p on a 4 year old cheap laptop (no hardware support for H.265), so you are overestimating the requirements. Can it do 1080p? Apparently not. When I try playback I get skipped frames and other oddities although some of it will play. But the laptop doesn't even have a 1920x1080 screen so it's useless anyway.
Not true. That's likely the lowest bitrate they tested at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_tiers_and_levels [wikipedia.org]
There's a maximum bitrate of 128 kbit/s for level 1.
I'm going to try to use Handbrake to convert an H.265 video to a double digit kbps H.265 video.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:50PM
The question is Linux/BSD drivers for that H.265 hardware acceleration (co-processing)..
How is H.265 compared to VP9 quality, bitrate and processor demand wise?
That 4 year old cheap laptop. What CPU, frequency, memory type and frequency and screen does it have?
And if you get sent an 1080p video, one will have to decode it and then rescale. So it's not the screen that matters really but the input format.
It would be kind of interesting to know the minimum bitrate for decent H.265 video at 480p, 720p and 1080p. Could be useful for camera feeds.. if one finds an embedded solution to compress the raw video.
On a technical note I find H.265 capability to use any block size transform kind of "hey why did it took them so long?" ;-)
Those prediction and filtering algorithms are interesting and tough to get right.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:20PM
I created an H.265 1280x720 video with an average video bitrate of 32 kbps. It looked like bad mosaic art but it worked.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:54PM
What bitrate is the minimum in order to pass the "wife & kids test" ?
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:33PM
It depends on how good your eyesight is and how far away the screen is. If I remember correctly, we have already far surpassed the maximum resolution for TVs, assuming you don't have the screen pressed against your face, sitting 10+ feet away in a well lit room, no more than two hours a day, etc.
Again, if I remember correctly, 8k *might* be beneficial for mobile devices, which are generally viewed at a distance of less than a foot.
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