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Can HEVC (H.265) be added to the iPhone with a software update or app ? If you wanted to record vids
- Thread starter DBZmusicboy01
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I am honestly curious why you think this. Seems to have many benefits with a good processor. And it is already used for FaceTime no?
Yep, FaceTime does use H.265 right now, but I know in the home theater space there's not a huge push for it (Plex/XBMC) since it's not providing the benefits yet that it should in the future. H.264 has been around a lot longer, so it's better ... for now.
I'd imagine they'd want it in hardware not software as soon as they can, for energy efficiency. Unlikely Apple would bring in software update to encode video into H.265 - just release devices that have the hardware to encode in hardware H.265. Just a guess.
Sure, but they wouldn't implement H.265 software encoding for 4k, likely the A9 would struggle or at the very least it would wreck your battery life. There's speculation as to whether or not the A8 (and subsequently the A9) has hardware encoding/decoding for H.265 but that was centered around FaceTime using it. FaceTime is only 720p though so software decoding would certainly be feasible and is most likely.
I suspect the real reason they are using H.264 for 4k is compatibility, I don't think OS X even has native support for the H.265 codec, Windows 10 does have native H.265 codec but not Windows 8. Processing power is still an issue for with software decoding and hardware acceleration is very limited as of know. For Nvidia only 960 and better cards have full hardware support for H.265, AMD discrete cards don't have H.265 support but I believe some APUs do, for Intel I believe only Skylake has full support for H.265 (Broadwell and Haswell are only partial).
I suspect the real reason they are using H.264 for 4k is compatibility, I don't think OS X even has native support for the H.265 codec, Windows 10 does have native H.265 codec but not Windows 8. Processing power is still an issue for with software decoding and hardware acceleration is very limited as of know. For Nvidia only 960 and better cards have full hardware support for H.265, AMD discrete cards don't have H.265 support but I believe some APUs do, for Intel I believe only Skylake has full support for H.265 (Broadwell and Haswell are only partial).
I'd be surprised if A8 or at very least A9 doesn't have hardware decode support - only switched off due to licensing fees. This would at least be able to be turned on via software - but only if the hardware pre-exists.
If you think about it, at some point Apple are going to want to use H.265 for iTunes content and 4k recorded video. To do that they need older devices to have playback. For example, if Apple had included H.265 for 4k video on the 6s, it wouldn't be too great if you could only share it with other 6s users. By having hardware decode support now, once they start using H.265 they can have a wide range of device compatibility.
I'd expect things to start to pick up once Intel skylake gets into MacBooks etc too.
If you think about it, at some point Apple are going to want to use H.265 for iTunes content and 4k recorded video. To do that they need older devices to have playback. For example, if Apple had included H.265 for 4k video on the 6s, it wouldn't be too great if you could only share it with other 6s users. By having hardware decode support now, once they start using H.265 they can have a wide range of device compatibility.
I'd expect things to start to pick up once Intel skylake gets into MacBooks etc too.