Intel Adds HEVC Encode API To VA-API

[Gusar]

A few days ago, libvpx received the beginnings of psychovisual enhancements: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=we...b7d5115a513dd9

It took them long enough, I must say. x264 has had psy-rd and other psy stuff for years, and the vpx guys are only now getting to it. Well, at least they are now working in this direction, so maybe vp9 will become something. A libvpx-1.4.0 release is planned soon, I'll test it in both vp8 and vp9 modes once it's released (though psy-rd is only for vp9, so I doubt the vp8 quality has improved much since the 1.3.0 release).

[Ansla]

Are you ripping a 3D Bluray? That vertical spliting sounds like a SBS (Side By Side) 3D video.

[finite9]

what exactly do you mean by "don't play right"? Too slow, visual artifacts?

Image is split into two vertical frames. It's like interlaced but vertically, in some weird way. Played like that in both Kodi on an ATV2 and Totem/Mplayer on Fedora

Thanks for the answer, but I was a bit hopeful about encoding in VP8 and in the future VP9 due to better licensing over H.26[45], especially as Intel now does VP8 hardware decoding on recent chipsets.

[Gusar]

Does anyone rip DVD's with VP8 in webm container? Is that good enough quality?

In short, no. The quality has gotten a lot better (vp8 used to be *really* bad a few years ago), but it's still noticeably behind what x264 can do. Speed-wise they're about the same.

Would ripping to VP9 in webm be a totally viable alternative to HEVC for Bluray rips, quality wise?

No idea about quality, I stopped my test (encoding a chapter of a DVD movie) when I saw how effin' long it would take for a video that vp8 and x264 took mere minutes to encode. I doubt it can reach x264 though, for way too long the vpx developers were too hung up on "objective metrics" (psnr, ssim) rather than visual quality.

Because I've tested H.265 ripping using Handbrake on Fedora 21 and the files just don't play right either in Fedora or Kodi

x265 is still kinda young, especially the psy-optimizations are still being tuned (new options, new defaults of options and such on a regular basis). Plenty of reports at the doom9.org forums that it's not yet at the level of x264 when it comes to detail preservation. It should play fine at least, what exactly do you mean by "don't play right"? Too slow, visual artifacts?

so if the support is there for VP9 decoding then it's currently got a big advantage over H.265, even if there is no hardware decoding and the encodes go at 1fps.

For me, the advantage would need to be *really* big to put up with such long encoding times. And based on the history of vpx, it's doubtful vp9 will ever be better than x265, or even x264. For now, x264 is still king.

[finite9]

OT, but when I used to rip my DVD's the obvious choice was x264 because it was just superior to everything else.

Now it doesn't seem as clear. Does anyone rip DVD's with VP8 in webm container? Is that good enough quality?

Would ripping to VP9 in webm be a totally viable alternative to HEVC for Bluray rips, quality wise? Because I've tested H.265 ripping using Handbrake on Fedora 21 and the files just don't play right either in Fedora or Kodi, so if the support is there for VP9 decoding then it's currently got a big advantage over H.265, even if there is no hardware decoding and the encodes go at 1fps.

[Kano]

It's now in master but it was in staging since the end of last year. More interesting is which hardware has it enabled. You find lots of interesting things here...

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libva/log/?h=staging

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Adds HEVC Encode API To VA-API

Intel previously committed an H.265 / HEVC video decoding API to the video acceleration VA-API interface. The Intel VA-API developers have now complemented that by adding a HEVC encode API to this open-source GPU-based video acceleration library...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...HEVC-Encode-VA