Video: Is Apple's HEVC Support a Game-Changer for Content Providers?
Learn more about HEVC at Streaming Media East.
Read the complete transcript of this clip:
Stefan Lederer: From a content provider perspective, do you think Apple’s support of HEVC ia game changer for some platforms, or do you think it's not worth the effort? The potential licensing fees are higher than the CDN savings.
Tarek Amara: To the last point regarding the licensing fees, we're not very concerned at which because we're part of Amazon. We do not pay the bills. If it was HEVC, we'd cover it from that respect. Probably the other one, the point that makes us, probably make a decision whether to deploy HEVC or not is how many bits we're gonna save, what is gonna change for us? If we start today, simulcasting, sending H.264, and the other HEVC, I did the math very recently, trying to calculate how many devices do support HEVC. It's really below 5%. Twitch 8is really web browser-supported, and Chrome is the biggest one. If tomorrow, Chrome decides to go HEVC, which is probably unlikely for the short term, we will go HEVC open-hearted.
VP9, the fact that it's available on browsers, is opening lots of room for us. From the compression efficiency, VP9 is really way back, not only from the capability, but because not many people develop real-time. For us at Twitch, people say “VP9 can deliver 40%.” That's a very wrong statement. If you go for VP9 as libvpx, for example, yes, it might generate a 30 to 40% gain.
If you try to find a real-time VP9 encoder today, you will struggle. There are really five people working on VP9 and no more. Probably there are 40, 50 companies that have been working on HEVC for the last five years.
There is a little bit of a dilemma. We believe HEVC is mature, but it will not save us from a hundred trillion megabits per year to probably 99 trillion. That's probably not what you're looking for at this stage. You want a codec that you would like to invest in. That is really supported and people will start using it for streaming.
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