HEVC / H.265 Text Specification Draft 6, RTP Payload and HM-6.0rc1

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265 under development by ISO / IEC Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) and the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG), could reduce between a 25-50% the H.264 bitrate, as demonstrated by Qualcomm with a preliminary version of H.265 or HEVC video on an Android tablet powered by a current-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor running at 1.5GHz.

H.265 Decoding Framework

The latest HEVC or H.265 text specification draft 6 can be downloaded from the link. It includes a single profile, Main, which is similar to the Progressive High profile in H.264 AVC. The draft standard contains provisions for future extensions similar to Scalable Video Coding and Multiview Video Coding defined in H.264 AVC.

The corresponding RTP Payload Format draft for HEVC or H.265 defines an RTP payload format which allows for packetization of one or more Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) units in each RTP packet payload,  as well as fragmentation of a NAL unit into multiple RTP packets. Furthermore, it supports transmission of an HEVC stream over a single as well as multiple RTP flows. The payload format has wide applicability in videoconferencing, Internet video streaming, and high bit-rate entertainment-quality video, among others. It is similar to the H.264 Payload Format, referred to be RFC3984.

The latest HEVC reference software version is HM-6.0rc1.