H.264 OR H.265? The Future Of Video Compression Technologies
Video compression technology has been a stumbling block in video surveillance design since the advent of the Internet Protocol (IP) in the 1990s.
Since then, video encoding standards have gone through many stages of research. Today, the industry’s attention is focused on the H.265 or HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) compression standard. It is the next version after H.264, which is currently the dominant IP video encoding technology. We will try to find out what your prospects are today and in the future.
The integration of H.265 technology may be hampered by the availability of optimized H.264, better encoding for CCTV systems.
H.265: understand what and why
The H.265 standard is a significant step forward in video encoding. One of its advantages is that it doubles the compression efficiency of H.264. So when streaming images of similar quality, H.265 uses only half the bit rate of the previous codec. This dramatically reduces bandwidth and storage requirements, allowing better use of both hardware and software. Users, in fact, get more features at a lower cost. Because of this, most hardware manufacturers support the implementation of the H.265 compression standard for video surveillance. Very soon we will be able to see H.265 as the next standard.
But despite all the advantages, H.265 is still far from being massively adopted. The question arises: can users somehow optimize image transmission before the revolution in the field of video surveillance occurs? After all, the popularity of high-definition video is growing, and demand creates supply.
Recent advancements for the current H.264 codec optimize bitrate in three ways: predictive encoding, noise suppression, and “long-term” bitrate control. This has resulted in a 75% reduction in memory requirements for H.264. Due to these innovations and some other factors, it is very likely that in the next 5 to 10 years, both standards will peacefully coexist in the market.
Barriers to H.265 adoption
The integration of H.265 technology is likely to be hampered by the availability of optimized H.264 encoding, as well as the cost of upgrading existing systems to H.265. Additional complications will also arise with the change in production processes for the launch of equipment that supports H.265 and with patents, which we will talk about later. In principle, H.264 remains a viable and viable standard for the vast majority of CCTV systems. Today it fully fulfills its functions and certainly quite well.
At the higher cost, users should be sure that the upgrade to H.265 is really worth it.
Limitations of laboratory tests
In testing by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC), the compression ratio of H.265 has doubled compared to previous H.264. But unsurprisingly, these tests were conducted in a laboratory setting and are far from many of the difficulties that arise in the process of actually using the standard.
Real-time encoding with a balance between algorithm complexity and compressibility is what one wants to see in the development of H.265. In practice, the compressibility of the H.265 codec may not provide a 100% improvement over H.264, even though this has been claimed.
The H.264 standard has been implemented for more than 10 years in the industry in which it has evolved, with the support of all chipset manufacturers and with access to a wide variety of encoders and decoders. This has been tried and tested in practice. In this sense, H.265 technology has a lot to make up for.
Patent price
Another problem that can hinder the massive distribution of the H.265 standard is the need to acquire a patent. Many business owners already have a patent for H.264, whereas H.265 was not very common in the industry in its early days, and the companies that own it are unrelated. Low demand for the new standard results in a much higher patent cost, a key issue that security companies must seriously consider, how this will affect production and, as a result, price to the end user. When introducing a new standard, price really matters, especially if users have to replace both the front and rear of the system to benefit from improved video compression. Paying several times more
