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Likethis96

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 29, 2016
3
1
Hp notebook i3 5005u dual core, HD Intel 5500 graphics. 4gb ram. Windows 10.

It is OK for a cheap laptop. I just end up replacing them every 3 years.

I know the macbook pro are about to be refreshed was just curious how well (2015) playback h265 encoded video.

I did get vlc but video file still unwatchable.
It seems that way with all h265 on my current set up.
 

RoboWarriorSr

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2013
889
52
Hp notebook i3 5005u dual core, HD Intel 5500 graphics. 4gb ram. Windows 10.

It is OK for a cheap laptop. I just end up replacing them every 3 years.

I know the macbook pro are about to be refreshed was just curious how well (2015) playback h265 encoded video.

I did get vlc but video file still unwatchable.
It seems that way with all h265 on my current set up.
I did play a H.265 video ( I think 720p but might have been 1080p) and it works well, CPU was hovering around 20-30% overall usage (out of 100% not 400%) using mpv.io. VLC was notorious for not using hardware acceleration and Broadwell does have hybrid support for 8 bit HEVC. Additionally on windows side, Intel seems to have released an update for the Iris GPU to be better utilized for 10 bit HEVC. Skylake does have hardware support but if battery life is not of concern, then the Broadwell CPU on the rMBP does a fine job of playing HEVC files.
 

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,078
660
Estonia
No issues with H.265 on any software on my 5 and a half year old MBP. It's not that big of a deal.
What software specifically do you use to achieve this?
My own experience is more in line with the thread starter.
OS X does not decode H.265/HEVC natively (so no luck viewing it in Finder/QuickLook/QuickTime).
Standard build of VLC does not play it back very well (I mostly see just macroblocks).
There is a special build with H.265 decoder of VLC available (libde265), but it does not play much better.
I've attached the screenshots. My rMBP is the early 2013 model with 2,7GHz QC i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Should be much more punch in there than in any of the 4K tv-sets.
Test HEVC clips can be found here: http://demo-uhd3d.com/categorie.php?tag=hevc
Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 8.32.37.PNG Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 8.34.00.PNG Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 8.34.44.PNG Screen Shot 2016-09-16 at 8.35.32.PNG
 

JTToft

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2010
3,447
796
Aarhus, Denmark
What software specifically do you use to achieve this?
- VLC and MPlayerX both work fine for me. As well as Beamer for streaming to Apple TV.

Though if your file name is correct, that's a 4K video you have. I haven't tried that high resolutions, and that's obviously a factor as well.

EDIT: A 60 fps UHD video from your site plays but not well in MPlayerX. There is no distortion in the video like you're showing, but it's choppy and the audio drops out.
 
Last edited:

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,078
660
Estonia
EDIT: A 60 fps UHD video from your site plays but not well in MPlayerX. There is no distortion in the video like you're showing, but it's choppy and the audio drops out.
I might try onemore thing here - try to switch to Apple's nVidia driver. Am currently using the nVidia webdriver. Although one would expect that one has performance superior to the stock driver.
Will report back.

PS Subler needs to transcode into H.264 as aTV does not support H.265 either.
 

RoboWarriorSr

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2013
889
52
What software specifically do you use to achieve this?
My own experience is more in line with the thread starter.
OS X does not decode H.265/HEVC natively (so no luck viewing it in Finder/QuickLook/QuickTime).
Standard build of VLC does not play it back very well (I mostly see just macroblocks).
There is a special build with H.265 decoder of VLC available (libde265), but it does not play much better.
I've attached the screenshots. My rMBP is the early 2013 model with 2,7GHz QC i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Should be much more punch in there than in any of the 4K tv-sets.
Test HEVC clips can be found here: http://demo-uhd3d.com/categorie.php?tag=hevc
View attachment 652834 View attachment 652835 View attachment 652836 View attachment 652837
Have you tried mpv.io? I'm curious to see if the hardware acceleration helps.
 

JTToft

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2010
3,447
796
Aarhus, Denmark
I might try onemore thing here - try to switch to Apple's nVidia driver. Am currently using the nVidia webdriver. Although one would expect that one has performance superior to the stock driver.
Will report back.

PS Subler needs to transcode into H.264 as aTV does not support H.265 either.
- The highest quality I've tried aside from the insane stuff on the webpage you're linking is 720p 24fps, which works completely fine.
 

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,078
660
Estonia
Have you tried mpv.io? I'm curious to see if the hardware acceleration helps.
No, I had not known about this software. Now I can say, it plays back much smoother, than VLC and without visible artifacts, but it still stutters occasionally. It may be because of my rMBP still has the SATA SSD, not PCIe like JTToft might have.
Looking at the statistics of playback of this 38Mbps 4K stream (Philips_Ultra-HD_Light_Waves_supershop-demo-2.mp4), I can see that it drops every third frame on average.
Screen Shot 2016-09-17 at 13.47.29.PNG Screen Shot 2016-09-17 at 13.48.10.PNG
 

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,078
660
Estonia
I can say that switching between nVidia stock and web driver did not make a slightest difference.
- The highest quality I've tried aside from the insane stuff on the webpage you're linking is 720p 24fps, which works completely fine.
OK, I see. Makes me wonder, how can a 4K Bravia TV play them all back without hiccups? Must have some hardware accelerated decoding onboard then. Because CPU might be on par with iPhone, not MBP.
As a scientific experiment, I will HandBrake me a H.265 clip in 720p@24fps and see how that will play.
 

RoboWarriorSr

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2013
889
52
I might need to try this with Sierra and see if Apple officially adds support for H.265 on Broadwell chips.
 

JesperA

macrumors 6502a
Feb 10, 2012
691
1,079
Sweden
Yeah the problem here seems to be more related to the bitrate rather than the codec, resolution and framerate. I can easily play h265/hevc videos on my 2008 MBP with a core 2 duo if the video is in a reasonable bitrate (5 Mbps), in VLC that is. It would not playback the 37 Mbps video that was attached in one of the post, but on the other hand, it would not even playback a h264 video at that bitrate either
 
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JTToft

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2010
3,447
796
Aarhus, Denmark
It may be because of my rMBP still has the SATA SSD, not PCIe like JTToft might have.
- Heh. I certainly don't have a PCIe SSD on my pre-Retina MacBook Pro. 2.5" SATA Samsung 850 Pro as per signature.

Yeah the problem here seems to be more related to the bitrate rather than the codec, resolution and framerate. I can easily play h265/hevc videos on my 2008 MBP with a core 2 duo if the video is in a reasonable bitrate (5 Mbps), in VLC that is. It would not playback the 37 Mbps video that was attached in one of the post, but on the other hand, it would not even playback a h264 video at that bitrate either
- Exactly. I can't see a difference in playback ability between H.264 and H.265, either. These insane quality videos play just as badly in H.264 as H.265.
 
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