H.265/HEVC Support

[MC Mjolnir]

With the latest graphics cards now integrating h.265 hardware and the growing demand for higher resolutions, will Steam IHS be making the move to implement h.265 encoding/decoding soon? and will the reduction in bitrate give enough benefit to offset the increased processing overhead?

[Da Flo]

+1, Double the Bandwith!

[ReBoot]

That depends. If the increased load increases the latency, all gains from less bandwidth will be nullified.

[Da Flo]

Well, we will only know that if we test it, right?

[Xjph]

The Android App has an option for "HEVC Video" in the advanced settings.
https://i.imgur.com/TXKpCZ3.png

Is this something that's implemented yet on the host side (since that's where encoding actually happens), or does the setting currently do nothing?

[Prothean]

Originally posted by Vithigar:

The Android App has an option for "HEVC Video" in the advanced settings.
https://i.imgur.com/TXKpCZ3.png

Is this something that's implemented yet on the host side (since that's where encoding actually happens), or does the setting currently do nothing?

I have a beefy rig (6700K @ 4.5, 1080 Ti SC, 32GB DDR4 3200, dual SSDs in RAID-0) and a fully Cat-6 wired LAN through a Gigabit high end Cisco switch and I tested the streaming on my Shield TV with the HEVC option and I noticed that the red graph line (not sure which stat that's representing) was consistently at the 30ms mark while the standard non-HEVC option was consistently around the 10ms mark, so there's definitely more overhead with that and I didn't notice a quality difference, but I was in 1080p/60 on my TV, not 4K... I kept it on the standard as I saw no visible or performance advantage... but with 4K, I'm guessing that's where the HEVC will come into play... I'm a motion graphics animator and encode frequently in H.264 and recently started testing stuff with H.265 and H.265 (currently) is much slower to encode even on a 16-core Threadripper workstation so on lower end hardware (encoding and decoding) I see that being an issue

[Xjph]

Originally posted by Prothean:

H.265 (currently) is much slower to encode even on a 16-core Threadripper workstation so on lower end hardware (encoding and decoding) I see that being an issue

I know it's much slower in software and I can't speak for the nvidia hardware encoder, but I know AMD's hardware H.265/HEVC encoder is actually faster than their hardware H.264/AVC encoder.

[Prothean]

Originally posted by Vithigar:

Originally posted by Prothean:

H.265 (currently) is much slower to encode even on a 16-core Threadripper workstation so on lower end hardware (encoding and decoding) I see that being an issue

I know it's much slower in software and I can't speak for the nvidia hardware encoder, but I know AMD's hardware H.265/HEVC encoder is actually faster than their hardware H.264/AVC encoder.

Interesting... it could just be the way Adobe Media Encoder handles it... it might be using software mode instead of hardware-specific acceleration, I'll have to look into that

[Suppenkoch]

+1 for H.265/HEVC Support

[[masni] CYKA CLEANER]

Everything is faster than amd encoder :D

[boltronics]

This is an old thread but it wasn't answered. My biggest issue is the Raspberry Pi supports 4k@60 playback for H.265, but only 1080p@60 for H.264. Despite having an expensive gaming rig (Radeon VII, 32Gb RAM, Samsung M.2 SSDs, etc.), I'm better off purchasing games on Xbox Series X or PS5 until we have a solution.

[ragnarok666]

+1 for HEVC support to get a better picture qualety on my 4k living room TV

In Moonshine my RTX 3080s encoding time for HEVC is about 20% faster compared to H264 at the same settings.

[boltronics]

Originally posted by ragnarok666:

+1 for HEVC support to get a better picture qualety on my 4k living room TV

What are you using to stream to your TV? A second computer? I want H.265 support because I want to stream to my 4K TV via my Pi so there is no computer noise.

[Prothean]

Originally posted by boltronics:

Originally posted by ragnarok666:

+1 for HEVC support to get a better picture qualety on my 4k living room TV

What are you using to stream to your TV? A second computer? I want H.264 support because I don't want to stream to my 4K TV via my Pi so there is no computer noise.

I use the Steam Remote Play app on some Apple TV 4K's on my 4K TVs and am able to stream at 4K/60 with HEVC/H.265 and it looks and performs flawlessly (on a Cat-6 Gigabit wired network)

[boltronics]

Nice. But I just want to stream to my Raspberry Pi and decode at 4kp60. I already purchased the hardware because people said it could be done and they had it working... then I discovered that this information was actually false. I have no intention of purchasing even more hardware for this. Come on Valve, we know it's possible with support in the software!

[Snoop05]

One year later and situation still seems to be same, tried on two machines, one with GTX 970 other with 6900XT (both with HEVC encoder) and Steam Link android app on Nokia 5.3 (with HW HEVC decoder), enabling the setting causes host to fallback to x264, with it disabled respective hw encoder (NVENC / AMF) is being used for H.264