H.265 streaming

Hi Video,

At this point, H265 support is limited. H265 only really runs properly on devices with dedicated hardware support (and software drivers for it). We will be adding additional H265 support as H265 slowly acquires support among streaming services over the next couple of years.

As Martin explained, FV Player does support H265 but setting up the streaming is a lot of trouble. It’s too early to troubleshoot H265 issues as part of our standard plugin license. So you are in for either a lot of troubleshooting yourself or you’ll have to pick up pro support incidents to have us troubleshoot your H265 issues for you.

Hello Sergey,

Thank you for all the details and your HLS stream files.

FV Player 8 uses HLS.js 1.4.12, while the latest version is 1.6.5.

I see we could upgrade and then your stream would start playing.

However – I don’t like the fact that your HLS stream does not play on iPhone 11 Pro Max nor iPhone 16 Pro which I have a hand.

We cannot use HLS.js on iPhone as the web browser there do not support Media Source Extensions.

I checked codecs attribute in your m3u8 file and it says:

hev1.1.6.L153.B0,mp4a.40.2

Using using Level of 5.1.

Here’s a different HLS stream with H265 codecs which plays with your version of HLS.js and also on the two iPhones which I was mentioning: https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/dataset/multi-codec/hevc/stream_fmp4.m3u8

I has the following codecs:

hvc1.1.c.L120.90,mp4a.40.2

Using using Level of 4.0 which means it’s easier to decode, although it seems to limit 4K stream to 30 fps.

So it seems you should be trying to find a balance of the video quality and device support.

Perhaps all you need is to add a lower resolution stream which the older iPhones would play just fine.

But unless you need 4K at 60 fps I would be using the lower Level of 4.0.

Thanks,
Martin

Hello Sergey,

I was testing a HLS stream created with Apple Compressor. It contains the following video streams:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=6081126,BANDWIDTH=7976053,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, hvc1.1.60000000.L120.B0",RESOLUTION=1920x1080
HEVC Broadband HD (and 4G LTE and higher)
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=12398816,BANDWIDTH=18128342,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, hvc1.1.60000000.L150.B0",RESOLUTION=3840x2160
HEVC Broadband UHD (and 4G LTE and higher)
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=3581290,BANDWIDTH=4253971,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, hvc1.1.60000000.L93.B0",RESOLUTION=1280x720
HEVC Cellular large (3G or lower)
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=1786976,BANDWIDTH=2362768,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, hvc1.1.60000000.L90.B0",RESOLUTION=960x540
HEVC Cellular medium (3G or lower)
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=246126,BANDWIDTH=430027,CODECS="mp4a.40.29, hvc1.1.60000000.L63.B0",RESOLUTION=640x360
HEVC Cellular small - (3G or lower)

So if we break it down by bitrate and HEVC level:

All of these are HEVC “Main” profile, 60000000 for general_profile_compatibility_flags and B0 for additional general_constraint_indicator_flags.

I tested it on varios devices and it plays even on iPhone 6s which is 10 years old. Although it would only go up to 1280×720 pixels on it.

Google Pixel 4 phone which is 6 years old plays fine too.

I still want to test on 10 or 15 years old computer with Fedora Linux.

Thanks,
Martin

Hello Sergey,

Upgrading HLS.js would fix the issue. FV Player would then play all the same streams with the HLS.js dome page plays.

But it’s not so simple with HEVC –

That Apple Compressor HEVC HLS plays fine on both iPhone 11 Pro Max and 16 Pro. Although it does not seem to switch to the 4K resolution, not even if I go to fullscreen in horizontal device orientation. The 4K stream uses Level 5.0 which might be too complex for iPhone.

It plays on Google Pixel 4 phone with Android 13 and up to date Google Chrome browser too. That’s good as that device is 6 years old.

It also plays on iPhone SE from 2020, although it seems to max out on the 1280×720 resolution for which it’s Level 3.1 of HEVC.

1280×720 even plays in iPhone 6s, which dates back to 2015! It does not even try to use the higher resolution, so it probably does not support Level 4.0 of HEVC.

However – it does not play on Windows 10 or 11 without either a paid video codec (https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7) or without hardware support for HEVC.

I don’t think a typical low end computer with Windows which you buy today would be able to play these HEVC streams. We will have to check.

We might come up with a strategy for HEVC for FV Player Coconut. Since most people who do not get HEVC support are on older desktop computers, providing a H264 720p or 1080p stream for the might be a good enough.

Thanks,
Martin

Hello Sergey,

1. We test on real devices. The iOS Simulator in X Code on macOS is also very handy.

2. The new HLS.js library is about 1/3 bigger than the previous version, otherwise we would upgrade to it right away.

3. We would like to have such page which would let us also compare FV Player to other libraries.

Thanks,
Martin