HEVC

[nbourbaki]

The new iPhone 8, iPhone X and the Apple TV 4K all support HEVC.

• Video formats supported: HEVC, H.264, MPEG-4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG

The specs for the iPads hasn't changed on the website, so for now I'll assume that this feature is tied to the A11 chip. Which means that when the iPads are updated to A11, we'll finally get HEVC hardware decoding and I'll absolutely need to buy a new one.

 

[007p]

HEVC hardware decoding requires A9 and up. So iPad 2017 and all iPad Pros support HEVC hardware decoding on iOS 11. It's only hardware encoding that requires A10 and up.

I wouldn't read much into the 'specs' on the website - this was all confirmed during WWDC 2017.

 

[nbourbaki]

Thanks for the clarification. All we need is IOS 11 with the updated AV Foundation to play back with hardware support. I couldn't find in the xcode documentation the specific A series processors that support this.

 

[007p]

Thanks for the clarification. All we need is IOS 11 with the updated AV Foundation to play back with hardware support. I couldn't find in the xcode documentation the specific A series processors that support this.

Here you go.

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/hevc-png.703179/

 

[mario-64]

Does the native video app on iPad Pro under iOS 11 support hardware hevc decoding or must you use a 3rd party app such as nPlayer or infuse?

 

[007p]

Does the native video app on iPad Pro under iOS 11 support hardware hevc decoding or must you use a 3rd party app such as nPlayer or infuse?

The native video player supports hardware hevc decoding on A9 and up, which all iPad Pros do, so yes.

That said, in true Apple fashion, the video must have the new codec ID of hvc1 to work with the native player, many earlier HEVC videos will have the codec ID hev1, so a remux could be required if you wanted to use the native player with ‘older encodes’. MKV containers are also still unsupported.

I guess that is one advantage of third party apps in that they will use hardware decoding for all hevc videos regardless of codec ID including videos contained in an mkv.

 

[mario-64]

Great thank you. Did some testing and found that iTunes won’t transfer a hevc file to my iPad even though I can play the same file via iTunes home sharing without problem

 

[007p]

Great thank you. Did some testing and found that iTunes won’t transfer a hevc file to my iPad even though I can play the same file via iTunes home sharing without problem

iTunes is currently annoying for transferring HEVC files, I haven't heard of anyone successfully doing it yet. What OS are you running iTunes on out of curiosity? Regardless, I expect an iTunes update might be needed at some point to allow HEVC file transfer.

In terms of the native player I have only tested files in safari and the photos app (saving a video from a third party app). So the native player definitely works it's just getting videos on the device that might be tricky

 

[TheRealAlex]

The new iPhone 8, iPhone X and the Apple TV 4K all support HEVC.

• Video formats supported: HEVC, H.264, MPEG-4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG

The specs for the iPads hasn't changed on the website, so for now I'll assume that this feature is tied to the A11 chip. Which means that when the iPads are updated to A11, we'll finally get HEVC hardware decoding and I'll absolutely need to buy a new one.

I’ll chime in and say the A9X can’t play HEVC HDR files someone one here tried and it failed. It will play HEVC but just not with HDR which takes more processing. That’s partly why the new 4K HDR Apple TV uses the A10X chip.

Apple did the same thing on the MacBook Pro with Sandy Bridge which can’t play HEVC HDR video as the original iPad Pro everyone gets excited about features but the Hardware is weak. But I’d be mad if I spent$2500 on a Laptop and it was obsolete 6 months later when they released KabyLake version