Intel Discontinues High-Speed, Open-Source H.265/HEVC Encoder Project

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Discontinues High-Speed, Open-Source H.265/HEVC Encoder Project

As part of Intel's Scalable Video Technology (SVT) initiative they had been developing SVT-HEVC as a BSD-licensed high performance H.265/HEVC video encoder optimized for Xeon Scalable and Xeon D processors. But recently they've changed course and the project has been officially discontinued...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Discontinues-SVT-HEVC

[rmfx]

Stopping innovation on purpose while keeping same prices/fragment features to super charge consumers and prosumers to the max, because the main competitor is in bad shape, has long term repercussions we clearly start to see here...

[ahrs]

Stopping innovation on purpose while keeping same prices/fragment features to super charge consumers and prosumers to the max, because the main competitor is in bad shape, has long term repercussions we clearly start to see here...

This is probably the result of layoffs more than anything. If you can only pick one encoder to support then focusing on AV1 is the right play but there's no reason not to support both.

[mcoffin]

Stopping innovation on purpose while keeping same prices/fragment features to super charge consumers and prosumers to the max, because the main competitor is in bad shape, has long term repercussions we clearly start to see here...

First off: genuine questions I actually just didn't know and others might be wondering similarly.

1. In the hardware space, especially given their recent manufacturing and "software" issues, I thought that the "main competitor"was doing fine? Honestly, I'm all on the software side, so let me know if I'm just poorly informed.
2. The SVT libraries are (afaik, though I'm pretty confident) all about CPU-based encoding, which would mean that the, super sadly not-doing-great Radeon arm of AMD's business might be what you're referring to as a "competitor"? -- If so, that's unfortunate. It's so rarely rewarding to be "doing the right thing".

EDIT: of the SVT libraries, I've only used the AV1 one briefly, before realizing it was built much more for the other side of the coin as my use case.

[uxmkt]

To be fair, H.265 is plagued with licensing/royalty issues, and it is conceivable that "no one" really uses the format because of that, and with that, as a company, you really have to watch where to spend money.

[sophisticles]

It's understandable.

While I liked svt-hevc and svt-vp9 better than x265 and libvp9 respectively, it didn't seem that there was any significant adaption from end users.

Add to that the fact that Intel would obviously rather promote their hardware encoders, and this development was predictable.

[sophisticles]

Stopping innovation on purpose while keeping same prices/fragment features to super charge consumers and prosumers to the max, because the main competitor is in bad shape, has long term repercussions we clearly start to see here...

What are you on about?

[OneTimeShot]

Well... At some point your HEVC encoder code is done. In any case, h264 is still 75% of video - HEVC never really got traction. Video is video.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

First off: genuine questions I actually just didn't know and others might be wondering similarly.

1. In the hardware space, especially given their recent manufacturing and "software" issues, I thought that the "main competitor"was doing fine? Honestly, I'm all on the software side, so let me know if I'm just poorly informed.
2. The SVT libraries are (afaik, though I'm pretty confident) all about CPU-based encoding, which would mean that the, super sadly not-doing-great Radeon arm of AMD's business might be what you're referring to as a "competitor"? -- If so, that's unfortunate. It's so rarely rewarding to be "doing the right thing".

EDIT: of the SVT libraries, I've only used the AV1 one briefly, before realizing it was built much more for the other side of the coin as my use case.

I think he was saying that in years past when AMD wasn't competitive (basically from the launch of the Intel Nehalem Core CPUs until Zen arrived and turned things around for AMD), Intel mostly gave up on innovation and and was happy to milk customers with high prices each year for small incremental performance gains. Now obviously it is AMD with a big performance and efficiency lead.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Well... At some point your HEVC encoder code is done. In any case, h264 is still 75% of video - HEVC never really got traction. Video is video.

Yeah. H.264 felt revolutionary. H.265 felt more incremental. Even with almost every GPU supporting hardware accelerated H.265 decoding for many years at this point, there is still a mountain of content created in H.264.