M2026-LE MkII - No press release on the product or h.265 yet and just a few small mentions such as:
"Axis Zipstream technology in H.264 and H.265"
"The camera supports video compression in both H.264 and H.265."
Genetec leaked some info about this many months ago to partners. As a company which has done h.264 smart codecs very well I'm looking forward to see how big of a deal they make of h.265 (or how little).
Happy testing IPVM.
[Note: Axis corporate response inside]
Slow clap for Axis in following in something they have declared for the past 2 years that they did not need and was unnecessary. If you read their previous statements, they stated that H.265 is for broadcast applications, requires expensive equipment, and needs very good lighting.
I guess either they are *brilliant* and figured it all out, or they were just launching a smear campaign because they knew that they were late to the game and had to wait for their suppliers or programmers or whomever to catch up.
H.265 has been out in our industry for over 2 years. Now the followers are joining in, now that the hard work of integration and early adopters has been done.
I personally believe that H.265 is the way to go for all new cameras/systems, and can't wait for better ONVIF integration.
On the other hand, your company is shipping H.265 products with no licenses. Concerned or not?
Btw, we have asked Axis for a formal comment on the H.265 release and will add when we get it.
For HEVC Advance, to increase adoption of H.265, they actually no longer require a license for software decoders on general purpose CPUs, such as web browsers, PCs, media players, etc.
http://www.hevcadvance.com/pdfnew/SoftwarePolicy12_01_2016.pdf
Sure, but you sell cameras. Cameras need licenses. Your company does not have a license for their cameras.
I think you are reading into it too much - they stated right there that Zipstream is NOT a replacement for H265. Building a better H264 before investing in H265 is hardly a smear campaign - if anything it is cost engineering. It also lead almost the entire industry to up their game (again) and rush smart codecs to market.
The manual for the new H265 cams also states that "The Axis product includes one H.265 viewing client license" - which is good to see some clarity (or as much clarity as possible) as they have done with H264.
Now all the manufacturers that have been already been running smart codecs with H.265 for 1-2 years can finally say "we do it too".
Axis responds:
While Axis sees H.265 as an interesting and useful standard over time, we also see that there are limitations in market support today, including VMS and client support. The H.265 standard was developed for noise-less broadcast video, and not for noisy surveillance video. Over time, implementation of H.265 codecs will mature, but the first iterations that are available in the market today might not be optimal for video surveillance. Knowing from past experiences, introducing a new video encoder on the market is a large project with many possible hurdles that require changes at different places in the surveillance ecosystem. To offer our customers and partners an opportunity for system preparations, we are introducing H.265 as an option in AXIS M2026-LE Mk II and AXIS M3106-L/-LVE Mk II.
We will test Axis H.265 later this year.
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