4.6.9 - January 31, 2018 H.265 hardware decoding added

Joined
Nov 16, 2017
Messages
6
Reaction score
2
Is HW decoding of h.265 working yet?
 

bp2008

Staff member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
12,666
Reaction score
14,005
Location
USA
Last week I emailed support saying that I didn't know of anyone who had H.265 acceleration working yet, and wondered what was going on with that. Ken got back to me yesterday and it turns out he hasn't been able to test it himself yet because the hardware he tried it on returns a "not implemented" message. Apparently he was testing on a NUC and it might be unclear if the CPU in there supports H.265 hardware acceleration. He wasn't very specific.

As a software developer myself, I'd say there is a pretty good chance he'll need to buy new hardware to debug on before the error can be tracked down.
 

bp2008

Staff member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
12,666
Reaction score
14,005
Location
USA
Note the 4.7.1.0 patch added this line to the change log as a result of my feedback:
  • Incompatible HW decoding will now be caught and logged, and the setting automatically reset to No.
 

aj2600

n3wb
Joined
Jan 31, 2018
Messages
9
Reaction score
4
Just to add to this discussion. I have noticed that the benefits of H.265 (no HW Decode) vs H.264 (HW Decode), such as smaller video clip sizes, far out weigh the lack of HW decoding at the moment. Assuming your CPU usage is decent (within tolerable range), I would suggest running your cameras at H.265 with BI for the time being until they can figure out the HW decode issues.
 

bp2008

Staff member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
12,666
Reaction score
14,005
Location
USA
I am indeed getting this message logged when I enable H.265 on one of my Dahua Starlight cams:

Code:
1  3/7/2018 12:04:26 PM   road2                HW VA not compatible: -3
Blue Iris 4.7.1 automatically sets the hardware acceleration for this camera to "No" when that happens.

Interestingly, the Status window > Messages tab only shows this log entry for a split second, then it disappears and you have to look in the log file to find it. I let Ken know about this.
 

jmg

Young grasshopper
Joined
Mar 4, 2018
Messages
54
Reaction score
4
Just to add to this discussion. I have noticed that the benefits of H.265 (no HW Decode) vs H.264 (HW Decode), such as smaller video clip sizes, far out weigh the lack of HW decoding at the moment. Assuming your CPU usage is decent (within tolerable range), I would suggest running your cameras at H.265 with BI for the time being until they can figure out the HW decode issues.
I agree-- at least on an i7 7700k, I switched all my cameras to h.264, turned on hardware acceleration, and made sure in gpu-z that the intel 630 was being utilized (it was -- being used 70% when BI was running, and only when BI was running). my CPU usage for BI is around 40-45%

Using h.265, intel 630 usage is 0% (no surprise), but cpu usage for BI is for all intents and purposes, the same -- around 40-45%, sometimes dipping in the to 50%'s . When I get around to it, I'm switching all cameras back to h.265.
 

bp2008

Staff member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
12,666
Reaction score
14,005
Location
USA
To my knowledge, the only way to do H.265 hardware acceleration in BI is to use an Nvidia graphics card, but that is super inefficient so not usually a good investment.
 

xtropodx

Getting the hang of it
Joined
Apr 30, 2017
Messages
139
Reaction score
40
To my knowledge, the only way to do H.265 hardware acceleration in BI is to use an Nvidia graphics card, but that is super inefficient so not usually a good investment.
Is there any point or negative impact, assuming it records anyway, to setting cameras to 265, will it cause BI/PC to work harder or will it auto adjust recording to 264?
 

peterfram

Young grasshopper
Joined
Nov 4, 2015
Messages
37
Reaction score
21
Using h.265 without hw acceleration works great. On newer CPUs there is no noticeable difference in utilization in my tests. The benefit of h.265 is smaller file sizes and decreased bandwidth consumption which really helps with wifi cameras.
 

fenderman

Staff member
Joined
Mar 9, 2014
Messages
36,897
Reaction score
21,250
Using h.265 without hw acceleration works great. On newer CPUs there is no noticeable difference in utilization in my tests. The benefit of h.265 is smaller file sizes and decreased bandwidth consumption which really helps with wifi cameras.
Of course there is a difference. A significant one. You can't test a function that doesn't work.
 

peterfram

Young grasshopper
Joined
Nov 4, 2015
Messages
37
Reaction score
21
Of course there is a difference. A significant one. You can't test a function that doesn't work.
I should have specified I was referring to cpu utilization of h.265 vs h.264 on newer CPUs without hw acceleration. Utilization seems about the same.
 

bp2008

Staff member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
12,666
Reaction score
14,005
Location
USA
It could be possible if the cameras dont use features of h265 that require significantly more cpu to decode I suppose. My own experiments show little quality difference from h264 to h265 at a given bit rate, on my cams. Many of mine still dont support h265 so I havent been able to do a proper cpu usage test.
 

fenderman

Staff member
Joined
Mar 9, 2014
Messages
36,897
Reaction score
21,250
It could be possible if the cameras dont use features of h265 that require significantly more cpu to decode I suppose. My own experiments show little quality difference from h264 to h265 at a given bit rate, on my cams. Many of mine still dont support h265 so I havent been able to do a proper cpu usage test.
Even if the h.265 required the same cpu usage as 264, you would still see a difference between ha and no ha.
 
Top