HEVC — The New Frontier of Video Content
“One does not simply export”
When working for my school newspaper, I had the opportunity to help establish the teams for a “digital first initiative.” Where we would cut down on printing and ramp up online content. This included videos, better imagery, and an audio podcast.
Talk about an overhaul right?
The big hurdle to overcome was the fact that many photographers, who had access to these nice DSLR’s where uploading images that were blurry and low res.
We diagnosed the problem and it came down to them preparing images for the print edition of the paper. Old habits die hard apparently and the work-flows for photo uploads were still prioritizing the literal paper over the necessary digital publication.
So we sat down and tested image compression and uploads. And for some reason, we didn’t take into account the compression from Wordpress! No matter what they or I did, Wordpress jacked up the images.
So with a line of code, I turned off the compression. From then on the photographers knew how to compress the files and upload them without Wordpress destroying the quality.
The big take away from this story is the fact that there are so many factors involved when assembling digital experiences. On the pixel level, we can ensure that the speed and quality of those experiences are good or terrible to look at.
We can blame the photographers, but in this case, it was my fault that the images where blurry. Good thing was, I knew what to look for while I was troubleshooting the problem.
“Why learn about compression?”
You might ask, “Why do all this work? I already can make websites and take photos, and it isn’t hard to upload assets to the website, what gives?”
Why do the musicians know musical notes when they can just play by sound? Why do medical students spend years studying the human body? Because they need to know the ins and outs of a problem to diagnose it.
What makes digital professionals who are aware of these standards so dangerous is they know how to stop the bleeding from a bad experience. Like the story, we were able to diagnose the blurry image problem by knowing what to look for when we tested the images be exported. So it ended up only taking an afternoon to solve that problem. If I didn’t know, what questions to ask, I would have spent significantly more time researching when I could be implementing new strategies for the paper.
The same goes for video and audio, compression on those fronts can affect how a person watches it or leaves it before the video is finished. Understanding why dialogue sounds bad by looking at the files and quality saves so much time.
If Youtube has trouble uploading your video, you can check if the export settings are optimized for Youtube.
Dropping frames, double check the export settings. Video not even playing? Check the codec!
Knowing the workings of what goes into digital products enables you to be a problem solver for your organization, and last time I checked, those people are some of the best compensated as well.
HEVC “The New Frontier”
Not all outputs and Codecs are created equal. Obviously.
Ever wonder why images become blurry and pixelated on Youtube? Or why a big video header on a website loads so fast while other video headers cripple the whole site?
Videos are malleable. And the tests I am about to conduct here are to help you understand what the rules are. So you can break them.
Apples push for the HEVC video codec can change the face of internet streaming. Once it is fully adopted, high-quality photos will take up half the storage they used to and you will be the beneficiary.
In this post, we are going to test the difference between the high definition standard, H.264, and HEVC. We are going to test a bunch variables, like the format, variable bit rate, and the range of that bit rate. Below is the naming conventions.
Codec- This is the compression type used on the file. Format- 1080p, 4k, pixel dimensions. VBR- Variable Bit Rate Pass. This is the setting on how the algorithm goes through and takes out redundant pixels. 20BIT_24BIT- This is just an example of a range of the target bit rate and the maximum bit rate of a clip.
“Break the Machine”
For the purpose of this test, I selected for sample clips that have different subject matter. One shows a dark room another shows a majority of white paper, another has pulled focus and a blurred background and another has tiny details in a rain scene.
All the information between clips will all be affected differently in the algorithm. so all the scenes will need to pull from different extremes to see the full impact the codecs have in this test clip.
Below are the four scenes we will be testing.
Conclusion
Keep an eye on HEVC, this is going to be the future. I’m particularly impressed by the storage savings on my devices.
Some of the best cooks in my life don’t use cookbooks, they use taste to measure if a dish is ready.
The key to great asset compression is good taste. There is an art to it as well as a science. You do not need to remember exact measurements and dimensions to be good asset compressor. It has more to do with understanding the tools you have and your end goal. The in-between process is up to what looks right, what moves right and what sounds right to you and the gentle tweaks to get there.
But the way you get to this point of being able to practically intuit good asset compression is by making a ton of mistakes.
Because good judgment comes from bad judgment.
In the digital media industry, understanding asset compression is one of those things that helps you close that “creative gap”, that ability to imagine something and have the end product be the manifestation of what you imagined. If you mess up compression codecs, your video will never be as good as you envisioned it. If you don’t understand audio containers, the notes on your sick mixtape will never be as crisp as you wanted them to be and not understanding how of HEIF works will never get your neat panoramic photo of Yosemite national park to tell a story. This is what separates Pros from the wannabes.
This knowledge makes everything websites faster, images crisper, videos seamless, and audio express the subtle sounds you don’t even notice unless you are in the recording studio. It is that important.
To close I want to share a quote from my professor about this knowledge:
“The most enjoyable portion of the journey…is… the joy of understanding technical aspects of compression that mere mortals will never know”
-Michael Harper
Pretty powerful stuff huh? Well, use your new superpowers for good then!
Caden Damiano
Thank you so much for reading through these tests, I know it is a lot. If your game for more mind-numbing compression tests, you can download the spreads to my Ultimate Output Guide here for free. In it, you will know all the in’s and outs for having the optimized assets that enable engaging experiences. Photos, Audio, and Video, it’s all there.
Originally published at CadenD Studios.
