How Many H.265 Requiring RFPs Are You Seeing?

JH
John Honovich
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVM

An IndigoVision country manager is reporting an increasing number of specs requiring H.265:

Over the last few months, I have started hearing this from multiple customers, consultants, etc. - "We are planning to put H.265 in the technical specifications of our next project" or "When are you planning to implement H.265 in your product range". But when I heard it from my most favorite customer, I had to study it a little better.

What are you seeing?

In our testing, the single biggest counter to H.265 is smart H.264, which reduces bandwidth far more than 'regular' H.265. Our first test of 'smart' H.265 shows that it can beat smart H.264 but with both delivering already quite low bandwidth levels.

(2)
UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
•Nov 02, 2016

I have seen many large enterprise customers stating that H.264 is required, and H.265 is preferred or optional, indicating that preference will be given to a vendor that has an H.265 solution.

U
Undisclosed #2
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Our first test of 'smart' H.265 shows that it can beat smart H.264 but with both delivering already quite low bandwidth levels.

What do mean 'already quite low'? As in so low that further reductions are not in demand?

35% off $100,000 of storage is still $35,000 savings. Have storage costs reached insignificant levels? Are retention times as long as everyone would like?

JH
John Honovich
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVM
In reply to Undisclosed #2

As in so low that further reductions are not in demand?

Think of it as an analogy to Amdahl's law (which I know you are well familiar with). The lower bandwidth / storage costs go, the less important are further cuts in those costs of a video surveillance system.

For example, once you use smart H.264, $100,000 of storage is going to be for one massive system (as, e.g., Zipstream is going to cut storage costs easily 50%, if not 75%+). At that point, you may reasonably be more concerned about decoding issues, VMS support limitations, product availability limits (i.e., less camera model options for H.265 vs H.64 etc.).

U
Undisclosed #2
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified
In reply to John Honovich

Are you declaring the 'megabyte race' over? ;)

(1)
JH
John Honovich
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVM
In reply to Undisclosed #2

Lol, it's certainly dented severely by smart codecs.

Ultimately, I do think the marketing muscle behind H.265 will be too great to ignore especially since (1) H.265 is much more recognized by Joe 'buyer' if simply because of it being easy to see it as one better than H.264 and (2) because smart codecs are hard to explain to non-technical users (i.e., understanding dynamic scene compression and dynamic I frame interval).

U
Undisclosed #2
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified
In reply to John Honovich

The lower bandwidth / storage costs go, the less important are further cuts in those costs of a video surveillance system.

Except that this is not a fixed system, and the demands are increasing for more storage all the time, keeping pace with the advances.

Consider the fact that 1 gig of storage space cost 100x what it did 10 years ago. Still the price of the hard drive is not neglible on a 8 ch system today.

Zip stream is just giving you 2x more. Which we will get in a year or two anyway, assuming historical trends. Bottom line, we will want to store more, and for longer, which keeps storage costs relevant.

JH
John Honovich
•Nov 02, 2016
IPVM
In reply to Undisclosed #2

Zip stream is just giving you 2x more.

Zip stream is at least giving you 2x more, 4x more is likely common

Still the price of the hard drive is not neglible on a 8 ch system today.

Yes, it is, and certainly after smart codec. Let's say 8ch NVR would use a 4TB hard drive without a smart codec. With Smart H.264, now you're down to 1TB or 2TB. How much more can you save with Smart H.265 at that point?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
•Nov 03, 2016

Zero, I have only seen one RFP in the past year written by a consultant. That consultant was still specifying JPEG2000 Avigilon cameras! I think it will be a while before the consultants update their specification templates.

Our customers don't write specifications for us. We rarely bid off RFPs, so we have a very limited pool.

Avatar
Brandon Frazier
•Nov 07, 2016
IPVMU Certified

I hope to start to specify H.265 soon but won't/can't until there is broader support. H.264 smart codecs are great in low motion scenes but H.265 should in theory at least show a savings regardless of the level of motion in a scene. I can't see any manufacturer releasing H.265 without a smart codec behind it so when broader support is there we should see a huge storage savings. With all the latest CPUs and GPU now supporting chip level H.265 decoding the decoding impact should be minimal on modern hardware.

(1)
New discussion

Ask questions and get answers to your physical security questions from IPVM team members and fellow subscribers.

Newest discussions