iMovie and H.265 codec

The H.265 codec and its lack of compatibility with the Apple ecosystem is one of the primary reasons I selected the Panasonic GH4 over the Samsung NX1 for 4k video.

I've read that many people expect Apple to implement H.265 in its video applications sooner rather than later because H.265 is the codec used for Face time already; however, I did not want to deal with the trans coding hassles in the interim.

Also, just because Apple embraces a codec for one medium does not mean that they will embrace it for another.

H.265 is still relatively new on the scene so I wouldn't be expecting it to be implemented anytime soon until its far more mainstream. One way to get around it for now is just to export full res and compress via Handbrake which has H.265 built-in.

DVD9 said:

It needs to be implemented in all video editing software immediately.

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For editing you want responsive scrubbing forwards and backwards, and some degree of realtime effects... What kind of machine is needed merely to play back 4K H.265 right now?

DVD9 said:

4K video will not progress to the mainstream in highest quality without using
H.265. The superiority of this codec is obvious. It needs to be implemented in all video editing software immediately.

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but the real question will be will it be compatible with existing software/hardware that still uses H.264. If not, I would not rush too quickly.

linuxcooldude said:

but the real question will be will it be compatible with existing software/hardware that still uses H.264. If not, I would not rush too quickly.

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They are separate codecs, H.265 is not an upgrade to the existing H.264 standard, it's a new one parallel to it. They are probably similar in many ways, but supporting H.265 in software will not affect existing H.264 capabilities. Just how H.264 and MPEG-4 didn't affect MPEG-2

sevoneone said:

They are separate codecs, H.265 is not an upgrade to the existing H.264 standard, it's a new one parallel to it. They are probably similar in many ways, but supporting H.265 in software will not affect existing H.264 capabilities. Just how H.264 and MPEG-4 didn't affect MPEG-2

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Which only makes the problem worse.

Anyway, even h264 needs to be converted to proxy (decompressed) to be able to edit it properly. So native support is not that important.

I doubt if iMovie will be updated with H.265 in the near future; Apple always adds new features into FCP faster

i edit h.264 on a 3 years old machine in fcpx just fine without needing to make proxies. (3,5 ghz i7, 32 gig ram) - as long as i don't want to playback more than two streams simultaneously. encoding everything to proxy media would need more time and harddrive space than i'd want to spend. but i guess, when 4k, h.265 recording becomes mainstream in a few years (afaik only samsung uses it right now - and they got no professional video products anyway), i'll have a faster machine.

regardless, i think we will see h.265 support in imovie/fcpx in fall, early next year at the latest.

I would argue that we will not see iMovie support H.265 until it is supported on the hardware encode/decode level. And that will not come until Macs are shipping with Intel 'Skylake' chips, which will ship late this year, early next.