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HEVC Support

No, this is not an issue of ffmpeg which is a dependency of MPV. This is a hardware decoding issue. lhc70000, the developer of IINA just closed a github issue of mine and commented on another saying that the hardware decoder API has issues and advised to turn off hwdec temporarily. Here is the link for reference. https://github.com/lhc70000/iina/issues/1208

The information I provided earlier is based on my understanding of how things worked, which I got to know from people over at #mpv. VT not supporting 10bit output and QT not able to play HDR media all that. Below is the transcript of some of the important bits.

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That's weird. I'll try myself to code a test program when I'll get a bit of time.
Apple is already using 10bit decoders in Final Cut X with videotoolbox.
 
EugW said:
Uh, no. Back in the day, people would say it didn't matter that such a machine didn't have 1080p h.264 hardware decode support, whereas a number of us made a point of waiting for machines that could do it in hardware.

That's why I bought a MacBook Pro in 2009 with GeForce 9400M, and that's why I bought a cheap Windows laptop in 2010 with Intel GMA 4500MHD. Fast forward a few years, and those who bought machines without such support were kicking themselves. (I considered getting the 2008 aluminum MacBook but it didn't have Firewire or a backlit keyboard so I waited one more year.)

Some of us are making purchasing choices now for similar reasons. I didn't buy the 2015 and 2016 MacBooks because the keyboards sucked and because they didn't have full hardware HEVC decode support. Apple this year has already said they are moving toward HEVC going forward.

The 2017 Macs support the above. As a bonus the 2017 Macs also have hardware DRM support for 4K streaming. Now it's true that currently iTunes and Netflix do not support 4K streaming at all to Macs, but if/when it does come, it is extremely likely neither the 2015 nor 2016 Macs will get it. No guarantee for the 2017s either, but it's likely, since they have the hardware support for it.

Thus, I waited and bought the 2017 MacBook and the 2017 iMac. Although I could be wrong, my prediction is that 2018 will bring 4K streaming to Macs with macOS 10.14, and only 2017 or later Macs will be supported.

BTW, I don't know if I understood your current post 100% correctly about old Macs but it sounds like the contention you made in that post is inaccurate. A 2015 or 2016 Mac will NEVER be able to support hardware 10-bit 4K HEVC decode. Even 5-10 years from now it won't, because the hardware doesn't exist in the machine. (Actually it does in some third-party GPUs, but Apple has stated it requires it to be a certain Intel generation, that being 7th gen or later. Apple is not supporting it in nVidia or AMD GPUs in these machines.)
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I am aware of the hardware limitations in Macs (at least via the intel CPU's). And it is smart of you to wait for the required hardware you need/want. I did the same for the 2013 iMac for Wifi AC.

Now my question remains, why do you currently need/want 10-bit HEVC decoding aside from just playing around with it?

And do you feel software decoding won't get good enough the media people are likely to see on desktops in the span of the iMacs useful life? My old i5 Haswell can power through 8-bit HEVC stuff fairly well with software that I wouldn't consider very well optimize as of this point.
 
cynics said:
Now my question remains, why do you currently need/want 10-bit HEVC decoding aside from just playing around with it?
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Well, I want 4K HDR Netflix support (which I'm predicting for 2018) for example and only the 2017 models have any chance of supporting this.

As for right now, there is already HDR content in the wild. Not a whole lot but it's there.

And do you feel software decoding won't get good enough the media people are likely to see on desktops in the span of the iMacs useful life? My old i5 Haswell can power through 8-bit HEVC stuff fairly well with software that I wouldn't consider very well optimize as of this point.
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Relying on software decoding for this would be foolish.

For example, several years back I got a used computer for cheap, for kitchen surfing and recipes, knowing it did not have hardware h.264 decode support. It's a 2008 2.4 GHz MacBook Core 2 Duo. Can it decode 1080p h.264 video in software? Yes... with lots of caveats. With 1080p YouTube, even in 2017 it sometimes still stutters, but let's say it's a 1080p mkv video. Yes it can usually do if it's not embedded in YouTube in a web browser window, but it does it with the fans at 100% vacuum cleaner mode, and the battery life is horrible. And plus, you can't do anything else at the same time. Not only is multitasking horrible, trying to do anything means the video will stutter. Actually, I really wanted to get the later aluminum version of the 2008 MacBook with hardware h.264 decode, but it was literally almost twice as much at the time, which kinda defeated the purpose of a cheap kitchen recipe computer. I finally bought that machine this year though, for uber cheap. In retrospect it might have made more spend the extra money though, since surfing for the last several years with the fans hitting max every so often just watching a news video or whatever was really irritating.

Fast forward to 2017 and HEVC: Note that not even my 4.2 GHz Core i7 iMac could software decode a lot of the 4K 10-bit HDR HEVC videos out there, so you shouldn't really expect a Core i5 MacBook Pro and definitely not a Core m3 MacBook to be able to do it even after heavy optimization 5 years from now. And even if you somehow got it to work... 5 years from now... don't expect to do anything else at the same time or have decent battery life.

Basically for the bare minimum, you want 8-bit HEVC decode in hardware going forward, esp. considering even iPhones output 4K 8-bit HEVC video these days. But if you want relatively future proof solution, you want DRM and hardware 10-bit HEVC support, something the 2016 models don't have.
 
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vlc 2.8.6 on iOS adds 10-bit HDR HEVC support, so now the 10-bit HDR Sony Camp Nature 4K HEVC video plays completely smoothly on my iPhone 7 Plus.

No such support in vlc on macOS yet though. It’s still vlc version 2.2.8 on macOS.
 
They usually release stable version os mpv every two months. In respect to that, we should have seen a update by end of November already but it still didn't happen. When it does, there will be new release of IINA with it; and hopefully things will get fixed.

I really wish Apple removes the API restrictions from Videotoolbox. Windows and Linux is SOOO much better in this regard.
 
I wonder why vlc for iOS is so far ahead of vlc for macOS with respect to HEVC.

It's sad that files that play completely smoothly in vlc on an iPhone won't play back smoothly in vlc on a 2017 5K iMac.
 
Yeah, crazy right?!

I also wonder what the reason might be. It could be because the VLC team doesn't wanna release an update until the issues are addressed/fixed by Apple. Way too many people use VLC that I thought. Even though 10bit hevc decoding is "supported", people like me who watch UHD remux once in a while won't be any happier; not until issues like color banding, weird artefacts and random glitches etc. due to hardware acceleration is fixed.
 
Sovon Halder said:
Yeah, crazy right?!

I also wonder what the reason might be. It could be because the VLC team doesn't wanna release an update until the issues are addressed/fixed by Apple. Way too many people use VLC that I thought. Even though 10bit hevc decoding is "supported", people like me who watch UHD remux once in a while won't be any happier; not until issues like color banding, weird artefacts and random glitches etc. due to hardware acceleration is fixed.
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Personally I don’t care. Make it work first and worry about the details later.

But it’s ok. I can wait.
 
Just tried a VLC nightly 4.0 and it was much better with 10bit hevc HDR video, nice a smooth, no grey stuttering. This was on 2014 5k iMac where vlc 2.2.8 was stuttering all over the place, IINA and MPV both had ok playback but way over saturated colours.
 
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You mean VLC 3.0. And MPV.

I got some HDR HEVC stuff which look washed out even with software decoding in latest VLC nightly builds. I would have used MPV without hwdec if battery and system resource usage wan't an issue. THE best setup one can get.
 
Right. 4.0. I missed it on the nightly builds page. My bad.

It sucks nonetheless. Even with around 150% cpus usage the performance is choppy. What's worse is that there are lots of rendering issue for a 10bit HEVC 4K remux. Hwdec and software - Worst of both worlds.
 
I just tested IINA with some of these HEVC files on my iMac Pro. It runs smooth. barely any GPU use (8%?) and virtually no CPU use. Hardware acceleration is shown as "video toolbox"
 
anticipate said:
I just tested IINA with some of these HEVC files on my iMac Pro. It runs smooth. barely any GPU use (8%?) and virtually no CPU use. Hardware acceleration is shown as "video toolbox"
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Low GPU usage when using hardware decode is normal. But the demand should be quite constant
 
h9826790 said:
Low GPU usage when using hardware decode is normal. But the demand should be quite constant
Click to expand...

Yes, it was constant. Both playing back HEVC and encoding H.264 show constant low grade GPU use through the encode or playback.
 
anticipate said:
I just tested IINA with some of these HEVC files on my iMac Pro. It runs smooth. barely any GPU use (8%?) and virtually no CPU use. Hardware acceleration is shown as "video toolbox"
Click to expand...

Videotoolbox = hardware accelerated.

For anyone curious if you see that its just the system in place for software such an IINA to access low level hardware required for decoding (and other functions built into the hardware).

Amount of CPU/GPU used will fluctuate wildly mostly based around the complexity of the encode. But even if you computer can't decode the video doesn't mean you'll have high CPU/GPU, skips and stutters can often LOWER the CPU usage.

Does VP9 use hardware decoding (videotoolbox)?

If you dont have a sample this is "The World in HDR" trailer (4k, 10 bit, 60fps) transcoded to VP9.

https://mega.nz/#!hJdFEIBI!uSOjZtkkjIVYSfqD9aSfONf1yq__uQvlsf47pCtFvdQ

I just redownloaded it to verify its "safe" btw, you'll just the file in its MKV container.
 
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