H.265 Video Codec Support

Comments

26 comments

  • Yeah, We need h265 support to upload more high quality videos with more less file size.
    It could make Discord uploading server and traffic better, however why doesnt they support it?

    11
  • Feerip

    "The licensing cost and the patent pools are such a  minefield that HEVC is not widely used on the Internet."

     

    I don't think you fully understood the source you cited...

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Provision_for_costless_software 

    "HEVC Advance made an exception that specifically waives the royalties on software-only implementations (both decoders and encoders) when not bundled with hardware."

    In other words, royalty is charged for products that have both software and hardware components (e.g. smart TV's with H.265 support) but not for software-only products (e.g. twitch, adobe premiere, DISCORD.) Discord implementation of HEVC would not involve patents or licensing. Minus any software engineering challenges, utilizing H.265 is exactly the same as H.264.

    Furthermore, as of this comment HEVC is 7 years old (first approved standard was in 2013). The most up-to-date figure we have for market share (again, according to your source) is mid 2019 (6 years old) at 43%. That may not be dominant but it is not what you would call low. Technically, H.265 is growing faster than H.264 did, which had less than 10% market share when it was 6 years old (2009, first approved standard was in 2003) before it exploded in popularity to 54% market share over the course of 9 months in 2010 (7 years old). 

    HEVC is more useful and popular than you think, please don't assume and generalize the rest of the world just because you personally don't see a lot of it in your own life. There are many more applications for HEVC than just end-user consumption (e.g. data archival, cinematography, bandwidth limitations, etc.)

    *Edited: forgot to add the last 2 sections in original comment

    7
  • Iawooodmypants

    HEVC is now the DEFAULT file saving size on Google Pixel devices. I have limited space on device, and so I had chosen the H.265/HEVC codec as my choice of encoding. But I've had to unselect it as my primary social interactions are on Discord, and so I'm losing space on my phone. Or have to delete a video after I take it, every time. Not ideal.

    Please incorporate this codec into your software asap. Thank you. I sincerely hope you're not keeping it out just encourage people to get Nitro because of bigger file sizes. 

    Other thread with the same request, please upvote both: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360051091674-Support-Video-Playback-for-HEVC-H-265-Videos

    5
  • Kaminix

    H265 is open source

    and it's still not supported

    2
  • Toggleton

    "H265 is open source"


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Provision_for_costless_software
     

    to have a opensource encoder like x265 does not mean, it is unproblematic to have HEVC/h.265 support. The licensing cost and the patent pools are such a  minefield that HEVC is not widely used on the Internet. Most use still h264 or did switch to VP9 and AV1.

    HEVC gets mostly used in environments like TV/DVBT-2 or maybe physical media like Blu-Ray . I mean the Codec is ~7-8Years old and the Market share is quite low. I mean h.266(Versatile Video Coding (VVC)) is close to be released, but it could be that it will have the same problems as h.265/HEVC.

    2
  • Czechbol

    Sure, VP9 may be better, but as long as I encode VP9 at 18fps (using libvpx-vp9), essentially slower than the video playback, I won't bother encoding in VP9.

    With HEVC (h265, whatever you call it) on the other hand, I can utilize my GPU's NVENC hardware encoder that can spit out the encoded video at 200fps or about 8x video playback speed (even better with h264 encode at 400fps), which means I don't have to wait as long until it completes.
    Is it slightly worse quality than CPU encoding? Sure.
    Is it worse compression than VP9? I heard it is but I don't know that much to say.

    That sheer speed difference is way too big in comparison to the quality differences for me at this time so I will go with the best supported codec that I have HW Encoder for, which, for Discord, is h264 at this time.

    I would really love every software with HEVC support. Or hardware VP9 encoder, whichever comes first for widespread use.

    2
  • mr spammer

    it won't be implemented because h265 allows for smaller videos and that would undercut their nitro subscriptions

    2
  • slavkosky

    HEVC codec was first published in 2013. The last version was released in August 2021. Today, going into 2023, Discord still does not support H265/HEVC embeds.

    Not only do I record videos on my phone (also a Pixel) in H265 for space efficiency, but we also use Discord as a central hub for our 16-person VFX Studio and do all renders in H265 that aren't final output quality. We started the company earlier this year, and I took the opportunity to convince the owner to move all company communications to Discord (he wanted to use Slack) and we've been very happy with the choice (plus it's led to several more Nitro subscriptions for you 😉)

    Please, please Discord Devs, if anyone sees this, help us out here. Even if it requires us Windows users to install the HEVC codec from the Microsoft Store (which I have installed reluctantly as MS decided to be greedy and charge $1 for it instead of making it free), as long as the feature is implemented it would be amazing for us and I'm sure many many others.

    Maybe HEVC embeds and Screen Share Annotation (drawing on another user's screen like in Zoom) can be a 'New Year's Resolution' for you guys?

    (It would also be a huge bonus if VP9 & AV1 embed support was added as well!)

    Thanks for everything y'all do! Discord is an incredible app in every other way except the lack of those two features listed above. Cheers y'all and Happy New Year!

    2
  • slavkosky

    Hey I've got an Nvidia 4000 series card so I'm all for AV1 taking over worldwide. Glad to hear Discord plans to support this

    1
  • R4to0

    Apparently Discord is now streaming using HEVC/H265 for supported cards that don't have AV1 encoder. Watching a friend stream right now I see this codec mentioned in debug screen: “Codec: H265 (103)”. It's not H264 anymore as it used to.

     

    Edit: 

    1
  • mcsy

    This is now a thing. Benefit over VP9 for me is NVENC support, I can encode HEVC videos with GPU acceleration. AV1 next hopefully!

    Blog post

    https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-july-1-2024

    1
  • Shady

    Av1 is here, 50light years slow but its here. I see no use with it if we cant reach atleast 35fps encoding on a low tier cpu .A lot to ask but it will take a long time to switch

    0
  • Ar2mis

    How does VLC, MPC etc support HEVC decoding then

    0
  • Maikel

    Thought there was something with the recordings from my phone, lucky enough there is nothing wrong with my phone only that Discord doesn't make a preview of HEVC recordings. Hopefully it will be implented it can save on storage for Discord also.
    For now I make my recordings in AVC

    0
  • itachimetal

    H265 is not a free royalty codec but...VP9 is and have better quality than hevc!
    but is SO HEAVY to encode. make the codec "inviable" to use.
    the next upcoming support is AV1 codec (discord already affirmated this) NVIDIA INTEL AMD already have a ENC/DEC to AV1 in their HW lines:
    Intel ARC GPU/CPU 12th / 13th GEN (ENC/DEC)
    AMD RX 7000s (ENC/DEC
    NVIDIA RTX 3000 (DEC)
    NVIDIA RTX 4000 (ENC/DEC)

    AV1 is the new WORLDWIDE codec ( RiP AVC 😔😢)

    0
  • Invertex

    Twitter as of this week is now encoding new uploads as HEVC. So Twitter video embeds are now also broken on Discord.

    Can we finally get HEVC support in Discord please?

    0
  • itachimetal

    YEP! this is good 'cause we can have a better quality with a lowbitrate
    discord share is Ondemand..soo the bitrate is dynamic to adjust the viewer network capacity


    but this is more like “if you have a HW to enc/dec” you can use 'cause you already paid when you bought your HW (gpu/igpu)
    discord can't support by itself with enc/dec software level 'cause is not a free codec
    i realy hope discord brings AV1 as soon as possible 🙏

    0
  • R4to0

    AV1 streaming is already a thing ages before HEVC support, appears as "AV1X". You need a fairly recent GPU to use it, like a RTX40 series or RX7000 series.

    It's probably not supporting for embeds for now.

     

    0
  • itachimetal

    yep i know that
    I meant full support like embeds and transcoding (they do on mobile with h265)

    0
  • Whitewarrior3400

    H265 makes my stream laggy, how to force h264 ?

    0
  • itachimetal

    for those wants to send a good quality videos files
    use vp9 cuz theres a lot of cpu's today that can handle encoding in good speed (5600g can do 30fps)
    is a little better than hevc or the same on some situations

    0
  • itachimetal

    hell yeahhhhhhhh 🤩🤩
    but a little strange supporting a paid codec first than a free one (av1)
    hevc hw is not that good…but is better than be “locked” at the very old AVC codec ^^

    0
  • SaltyKimchi

    Royalty and licensing fees problem. Discord have to pay the licensing fee to add HEVC support

    -1
  • itachimetal

    yeah! every big industry will support it
    discord yt twitch netflix...and many others (somes already use..like Youtube)
    if u have a intel 12th 13th gen u can try encode with SVT-AV1
    avx2 and others instructions make a good speed encoding on this HEAVY codec
    av1 can not be better than vp9 or hevc in some aspects
    but is BETTER when is set to use lowbitrate without losing quality too much 😋

    u can check this GREAT live exemple where u can watch 1440p 120fps with just a 8mbps 😲😲
    https://www.twitch.tv/videos/637388605 

    -1
  • iTACHi
     

    actually Discord supports:
    .mp4. mov .webm (containers) | vp8 vp9 h264 (codecs)
    hevc have a good "backend" but a failure "frontend".
    VP9 is slight better than h265! many cpu/gpu has VP9 HW DECODER.

    -2
  • itachimetal

    Parabens ao discord por finalmente trazer algo BOM dessa vez

    -2

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