I would very much like to hear more about any HEVC encoding you're doing via the iMac Pro.
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4K HEVC 10-bit on the 2017 Core m3 MacBook is gorgeous!
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I would very much like to hear more about any HEVC encoding you're doing via the iMac Pro.
Here is High Sierra's QuickTime with my 1.2 GHz Core m3 MacBook (2017), playing back a very, very high bitrate 10-bit h.265 HEVC file. It's buttery smooth, with ~25% CPU usage. It was as expected, but nonetheless I'm pleased.
View attachment 706496
View attachment 706497
The file is here:
http://www.4ktv.de/testvideos/
Note that link has two of the same Sony Camp video, but one is 8-bit and one is 10-bit. The one in the images above that I tested is the 10-bit version, which is much harder to decode, but the MacBook with hardware decoding doesn't break a sweat at around 25% CPU usage. With the 8-bit 79 Mbps version of the video, CPU usage is only around 15-20% total, including the overhead with Activity Monitor and a few other near-idle apps in the background.
Note that my 4.2 GHz Core i7-7700K iMac could not decode this cleanly using software decode in Sierra.
There's no H.265 videos on that link.
I'll try again on this latest project from FCPX to compressor on the next pass and time it. It shouldn't be that slow. BareFeats.com did some HEVC testing and it showed a fast speed...
Managed to Google it, tried it on my desktop - 6700k @ 4.6GHz and a GTX 1080 @ 1974MHz. Doesn't run on VLC but runs smooth on Windows Media Player. Need to try it out on my MacBook (Skylake) to see what happens.
I really hope for the next version of the MacBook they improve the display with P3 colour space and some sort of HDR support. Also would love Netflix and Amazon players to playback at 4K and downscale on the MacBook. I find I use this thing a lot to stream and any improvement to video playback would be awesome.
IINA uses hardware acceleration here; hence the lowly cpu usage. MPV on the other hand doesn't use hardware acceleration by default due to limitations of APIs; hence it uses a lot more CPU doing the whole thing in software.
Software decoding even though quite resource intensive, is far better than hardware decoding, in terms of quality, roughly speaking. Use hardware decode in MPV and you'll see the same thing; lowly cpu usage but inferior quality.
Also, as far as I've seen, IINA saturates the colors more. Compared to QT, IINA's playback sometimes seem over the top unnatural saturated.
I thought both using hardware acceleration by default. I agree with the saturation part, i was playing with the sliders already
MPV doesn't use hardware acceleration, ever. In fact, their documentation used to encourage people to use software decoding if possible, and used to warn about using hwdec.
Anybody try out the newest version of VLC?
For me the playback of those jellyfish samples was greatly improved, especially the 400mbit 10bit one.
On the other hand my Sony, LG and Samsung sample files weren't displayed correctly and had lots of dropped frames.
For me the playback of those jellyfish samples was greatly improved, especially the 400mbit 10bit one.
On the other hand my Sony, LG and Samsung sample files weren't displayed correctly and had lots of dropped frames.
Where can I find 8K demo files? h.265 HEVC and h.264 AVC.
The reason I ask is because of this Wiki entry:
It shows 8K 10-bit HEVC decode support for Apollo Lake.
The reason I ask is because of this Wiki entry:
It shows 8K 10-bit HEVC decode support for Apollo Lake.
IINA 0.15 does tend to oversaturate the colours and I even wondered if it was trying to fake a 10-bit to 8-bit conversion. However, that faked conversion theory probably isn't true, because I find that even with 8-bit HEVC, IINA is more saturated. QuickTime is more balanced.
More importantly though, with the Sony Nature Camp 10-bit HDR video, IINA causes banding too. It's noticeable in the sky for example. OTOH, for QuickTime, there is no such banding, but the colours are undersaturated with 10-bit HEVC. This is a similar type of image to what I get when I play a 4K UHD 10-bit HDR HEVC Blu-ray video on my 1080p SDR projector, although it may be worse on the projector. No banding or anything, but desaturated colours. To compensate, I had to buy a Panasonic player that does good HDR to SDR conversion for the projector.
I don't understand this colour space stuff properly. How does it work with these wide gamut P3 iMacs? Does QuickTime do any conversion at all to compensate? Is it reasonable to wish for QuickTime in macOS 10.14 to do perfect 10-bit to P3 conversion on the fly on P3 Macs?
I probably am not the person to answer since I don't understand it either. Never researched about it in that details.
But I agree with that 'banding' situation. I've noticed it in so many different videos that I stopped counting. 10bit HDR, specially high bitrate streams, where there is a subtle gradient, whether a beam of light in the 21st Century Fox intro or a sky or fire or anything, I see the banding - in IINA and in MPV ( only when using hardware acceleration). Thing about QT is that it can't play those streams and I even thought about converting the movie with handbrake but a 90GB conversion seemed pointless at that time.
And QT saturates images too. Yeah it does. I've actually posted about it in a separate thread sometime back, can't find it now. It took me a while to realise that about 5-10 seconds after the controls and the cursor disappear in a full screen playing QT window, it gradually increases the contrast a little bit. A really noticeable amount. If you move the cursor the contrast immediately drops to normal. I haven't seen if they changed it in latest QT, that released yesterday. Will have to check.
But I agree with that 'banding' situation. I've noticed it in so many different videos that I stopped counting. 10bit HDR, specially high bitrate streams, where there is a subtle gradient, whether a beam of light in the 21st Century Fox intro or a sky or fire or anything, I see the banding - in IINA and in MPV ( only when using hardware acceleration). Thing about QT is that it can't play those streams and I even thought about converting the movie with handbrake but a 90GB conversion seemed pointless at that time.
And QT saturates images too. Yeah it does. I've actually posted about it in a separate thread sometime back, can't find it now. It took me a while to realise that about 5-10 seconds after the controls and the cursor disappear in a full screen playing QT window, it gradually increases the contrast a little bit. A really noticeable amount. If you move the cursor the contrast immediately drops to normal. I haven't seen if they changed it in latest QT, that released yesterday. Will have to check.
Heh. My friend is visiting and was complaining he needs to buy a new gaming laptop to be able to play his 8-bit HEVC videos. He currently has a 17" behemoth with an older AMD CPU, with the fan constantly running at max and slow as molasses in December since it's got a spinning hard drive. Furthermore, the off-axis image quality is horrible because of his monitor, and his HEVC videos stutter because he doesn't have hardware HEVC acceleration. And the battery life is totally awful of course.
So I showed him my snappy 12" MacBook with no fan and beautiful off-axis image quality and assured him that this machine plays HEVC just fine with no stuttering. And mentioned that for surfing, this machine lasts about 4X as long as his.
I advised him he does not need a gaming laptop, or one that has to have the fan running all the time, and that no that off-axis screen dimming isn't a security feature, but actually a sign of a lower end screen.
Since he doesn't game, I've advised something like an i5-8250U or something to that effect for his next laptop with SSD and IPS screen. He was all ready to buy an i7-7700HQ just to play HEVC videos, on a screen of unknown quality. He had no idea the 45 W i7-7700HQ was only a little bit faster than the 15 W i5-8250U and that the both are total overkill for HEVC playback. He also didn't even realize that differences in chip power usage are in large part responsible for computer fan noise and battery drain.
So I showed him my snappy 12" MacBook with no fan and beautiful off-axis image quality and assured him that this machine plays HEVC just fine with no stuttering.
And mentioned that for surfing, this machine lasts about 4X as long as his.I advised him he does not need a gaming laptop, or one that has to have the fan running all the time, and that no that off-axis screen dimming isn't a security feature, but actually a sign of a lower end screen.
Since he doesn't game, I've advised something like an i5-8250U or something to that effect for his next laptop with SSD and IPS screen. He was all ready to buy an i7-7700HQ just to play HEVC videos, on a screen of unknown quality. He had no idea the 45 W i7-7700HQ was only a little bit faster than the 15 W i5-8250U and that the both are total overkill for HEVC playback. He also didn't even realize that differences in chip power usage are in large part responsible for computer fan noise and battery drain.
Heh. My friend is visiting and was complaining he needs to buy a new gaming laptop to be able to play his 8-bit HEVC videos. He currently has a 17" behemoth with an older AMD CPU, with the fan constantly running at max and slow as molasses in December since it's got a spinning hard drive. Furthermore, the off-axis image quality is horrible because of his monitor, and his HEVC videos stutter because he doesn't have hardware HEVC acceleration. And the battery life is totally awful of course.
So I showed him my snappy 12" MacBook with no fan and beautiful off-axis image quality and assured him that this machine plays HEVC just fine with no stuttering.
I advised him he does not need a gaming laptop, or one that has to have the fan running all the time, and that no that off-axis screen dimming isn't a security feature, but actually a sign of a lower end screen.
Since he doesn't game, I've advised something like an i5-8250U or something to that effect for his next laptop with SSD and IPS screen. He was all ready to buy an i7-7700HQ just to play HEVC videos, on a screen of unknown quality. He had no idea the 45 W i7-7700HQ was only a little bit faster than the 15 W i5-8250U and that the both are total overkill for HEVC playback. He also didn't even realize that differences in chip power usage are in large part responsible for computer fan noise and battery drain.
Good advice. As someone with a 6700k + GTX 1080 and all SSD gaming rig I find my 2016 Macbook plays back all media just as well as the big desktop rig and I love that there is no fan. Only thing it won't play back is 4k Youtube which is fine, can still play 4k video files. I'm waiting until there a 10nm version of the Macbook, hopefully with a P3 colour display before I upgrade.
Macbook + high end gaming rig is the ultimate combination. Quite incredible how good low TDP chips have become.
Too bad none of the MacBook or MacBook Pro displays can show a 4K video at full resolution. I was thinking of upgrading my MacBook Pro this year as I'm still using my first-gen Retina model from 2012, but being able to play these heavy 10-bit 4K H.265 files is almost pointless when I can't use my 5K iMac as a screen...Here is High Sierra's QuickTime with my 1.2 GHz Core m3 MacBook (2017), playing back a very, very high bitrate 10-bit h.265 HEVC file. It's buttery smooth, with ~25% CPU usage. It was as expected, but nonetheless I'm pleased.
View attachment 706496
View attachment 706497
The file is here:
http://www.4ktv.de/testvideos/
Note that link has two of the same Sony Camp video, but one is 8-bit and one is 10-bit. The one in the images above that I tested is the 10-bit version, which is much harder to decode, but the MacBook with hardware decoding doesn't break a sweat at around 25% CPU usage. With the 8-bit 79 Mbps version of the video, CPU usage is only around 15-20% total, including the overhead with Activity Monitor and a few other near-idle apps in the background.
Note that my 4.2 GHz Core i7-7700K iMac could not decode this cleanly using software decode in Sierra.
It's a shame Apple got rid of Target Display Mode.
For me it's about compatibility. If I happen to have a 10-bit 4k file, I want to have the flexibility of playing it anywhere, so I tend to make my purchases strategically this way. And I also want the ability to multitask with no fan noise while playing a video.
It's similar to back in the day when h.264 was just coming to the forefront. I wanted h.264 hardware decode capability for my 720p MacBook Pro even though Core 2 Duos of the time could decode 720p h.264 in software, although 1080p was sometimes a problem. Having hardware support meant:
1) No problems playing 1080p video, which was becoming mainstream, and no need to transcode down to 720p to get decent playback. 1080p sometimes did work fine in software, but more often it did not.
2) 720p video was never a problem. 720p did work in software, but in some cases you would still get occasional stutters.
3) No fan noise with h.264 playback.
4) Fluid multitasking and fluid menu activation when watching videos.
It's just so much more pleasant surfing on my 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with hardware h.264 acceleration than it is my wife's 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with no hardware h.264 acceleration. (I bought the latter used as a cheap kitchen recipe machine for the wife.)
The same applies here to a certain extent. Even if your machine can play some 4K 10-bit files in software (eg. 4K p24 with low complexity), it usually needs to do with high CPU load, poor multitasking ability, and loud fans. And even if it works on an iMac, it may not work on a MacBook Pro or a MacBook. OTOH, if you have hardware support for all of the above, then no problem.
Even iPhones can do it these days, since they have hardware support for it. I think that too is a pretty good indicator which direction Apple is going.
Agreed.
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Interesting to see the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro did not get updated to 8th generation chips today along with the Touch Bar models. As it stands now, non-Touch Bar model will not likely get updated until 2019 (assuming it gets updated at all).
The good news though is that means that it seems likely Apple truly does view the 2017 Kaby Lake models as baseline for 4K HDR support, which make sense given the technology they have.
The good news though is that means that it seems likely Apple truly does view the 2017 Kaby Lake models as baseline for 4K HDR support, which make sense given the technology they have.
Do you think the newer quad core MPBs will have anything superior to 2017 Kaby Lake models, in terms of HEVC encode / decode (4K media consumption, in general)?
Feature wise I don't think so. There may be differences in GPU clock speed though.