ffmpeg supports both x265 and Kvazaar HEVC encoder

Tampere University of Technology has developed Kvazaar HEVC encoder since 2014. as LGPLv2.1-licensed open-source HEVC encoder. Their goals are

1. Coding efficiency close to HEVC reference encoder (HM)
2. Modular encoder structure to simplify its data flow modeling
3. Efficient support for different parallelization approaches
4. Easy portability to different platforms
5. Optimized encoding speed without sacrificing its coding efficiency, modularity, or portability
6. Reduced computation and memory resources without sacrificing its coding efficiency, modularity, or portability
7. Excellent software readability and implementation documentation

Like x265 being used in FFmpeg,

FFmpeg can make use of the kvazaar library for HEVC encoding.

Go to https://github.com/ultravideo/kvazaar and follow the instructions for installing the library. Then pass --enable-libkvazaar to configure to enable it.

It is also added in the Libav FFmpeg fork. It could be interesting to compare this to x265.

H.265 / HEVC Encoders Comparison

Recently MSU Graphics and Media Lab compared the following video encoders:

HEVC

f265 H.265 Encoder

Intel MSS HEVC GAcc

Intel MSS HEVC Software

Ittiam HEVC Hardware Encoder

Ittiam HEVC Software Encoder

Strongene Lentoid HEVC Encoder

SHBP H.265 Real time encoder

x265

Non HEVC

InTeleMax TurboEnc

SIF Encoder

VP9 Video Codec

x264

with objective quality metrics SSIM (structural similarity) on two platforms:

Desktop—Core i7 4770R @3.9 GHz, RAM 4 GB, Windows 8.1

Server—Xeon E5 2697v3, RAM 64 GB, Windows Server 2012

x265 performed the best, then Intel MSS Hevc and x264. The x265 speed gains were mostly achieved by enabling Wavefront parallel processing on multiple cores and writing critical parts of the code in assembler.

The full free report is here.

HEVC / H.265 Development Tutorial

1. Book and Slides

The book "High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC): Algorithms and Architectures (Integrated Circuits and Systems) " is a good reference in addition to the spec. It covers

(1) High-level syntax of HEVC

(2) Block structures and parallelism

(3) Intra-picture prediction

(4) Inter-picture prediction

(5) Transform and quantization

(6) In-loop filtering 

(7) Entropy coding

(8) Compression performance

(9) Decoder hardware architecture design

(10) Encoder hardware architecture design

Two good tutorial slides 

(1) "Design and Implementa/on of Next Genera/on Video Coding Systems (H.265/HEVC Tutorial)" by Vivienne Sze, et al.

(2) "HEVC/H.265 Video Coding Standard (v. 2), Including Range, Scalable, and Multiview Extensions” by Dan Grois, et al.

2. Spec

ITU-I H.265 High efficiency video coding in ITU website.

3. Reference Software

The reference software for HEVC is called HM (HEVC Test Model). It is maintained in a Subversion repository. Please use a Subversion client to access the repository links directly or use the source browser for web browser access.

• HM software repository (main at HHI)
• HM software repository (mirror at BBC)
• HM software repository (source browser)

4. x265

x265 was shown to be the best overall HEVC encoder in Moscow State University's first HEVC Codec Comparison! x265 was particularly strong in the universal and ripping (high quality) use-cases. The full report is expected to be published on their website,www.compression.ru/video

5. Analysis Tool

Two years ago I compared the available HEVC/H.265 bistream analysis tools.  Currently it seems Intel® Video Pro Analyzer (Intel® VPA) 2016 is the best.

OS X EI Capitan Perl error: Can't locate modules in @INC

Recently I upgraded my OS X from Yosemite to EI Capitan because many reviews showed EI Capitan run much faster than Yosemite. However I encountered a compiler problem when using perl

"can't locate xml/parser.pm in @INC"

It means XML::Parser module can't be found in Perl's include path (opt/local/bin/perl). To solve this problem, we may use CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). To get CPAN shell, run

> sudo perl -MCPAN -eshell

then install XML parser

cpan[2]> install XML::Parser

For other missing modules, we just install the requested modules, for example,

cpan[2]> install XML::Writer