The future of encoding
The emergence of 4K in particular has exposed H.264’s weaknesses, particularly as file sizes have ballooned with the higher resolution. H.265 rectifies this thanks to its ability to encode at 25 to 35% lower bit rates without a further drop in quality. Unsurprisingly, however, encoding times are slower because of the demands of the new, more complex compression technologies.
The major issue with H.265 is that, like the H.264 standard, many of its technologies are protected by patents, which require licence payments in commercial circles. Again, an open-source version – x265 – exists, but it’s still in early stages of development. If you’re looking for a 4K-friendly codec that’s completely open source and royalty free, then Google’s VP9 codec is the obvious alternative.
While VP8 was roundly trounced by H.264 in the last battle of the codecs, VP9 will put up a stiffer fight against H.265. Support is baked into Chrome,Firefox and YouTube, it’s been backed by many major TV and hardware manufacturers, and there’s even a plugin for gstreamer ( libgstvpx.so) that’ll decode streams on your PC using any compatible video player, such as the built-in Videos app in Ubuntu.
Nevertheless, at this moment in time, both H.265 and VP9 are still relatively embryonic, so the widespread device support enjoyed by H.264 ensures that it remains a compelling alternative for those whose videos are HD or standard definition, and who want to generate movies that’ll play on just about anything without too much hassle.