Hi All any one know if the x5 get the h.265 codec or 100mbs..
This camera has alaways been poor for the price, the new codec would atleast help with blow of the new inspire 2 coming out....

Not unless you are going to rip out that Amberella A9 SOC and replace it yourself....

Sorry Skyris, H.265 is not available for X5 camera.

Exactly.  It's not a question of firmware, the hardware isn't up to it unfortunately.

another thing - you'd likely have to invest in a new computer to use h.265 at 4K. Its extremely, extremely punishing on the processor. Until they put in specialised DSPs to handle h.265, most people will only work with it on HD video.

Mike-the-cat Posted at 2017-1-11 15:01
another thing - you'd likely have to invest in a new computer to use h.265 at 4K. Its extremely, extremely punishing on the processor. Until they put in specialised DSPs to handle h.265, most people will only work with it on HD video.

Yep, I just rendered 1 minute 4K video test with 265 and it took like 2 hours (!) on my brand new loaded  iMac Retina ... Picture quality is pretty much the same and file size a fraction of 264 equivalent, but ...

Dobmatt Posted at 2017-1-11 21:38
Yep, I just rendered 1 minute 4K video test with 265 and it took like 2 hours (!) on my brand new loaded  iMac Retina ... Picture quality is pretty much the same and file size a fraction of 264 equivalent, but ...

You don't want the file size to be less, you want it to be the same.   H.265 is twice the quality at the SAME bitrate, which is very different to the SAME quality at half the bitrate.

I must be missing something because I don't own one yet.  Isn't the max bitrate 100Mb/s?  If so, can you use this bitrate on both H.264 and H.265?   If so that's what you want to do.

If you have a file that has the same file size it will be twice the quality.

Again, I may be off base because it doesn't allow you to use a high bitrate in H.265 , but if you can then do it.

jimhare Posted at 2017-1-12 16:26
You don't want the file size to be less, you want it to be the same.   H.265 is twice the quality at the SAME bitrate, which is very different to the SAME quality at half the bitrate.

I must be missing something because I don't own one yet.  Isn't the max bitrate 100Mb/s?  If so, can you use this bitrate on both H.264 and H.265?   If so that's what you want to do.

You'll get quality gains with h.265 but it doesn't halve the bitrate. There is a lot of complex math going on in the background to get the gains in savings and you pay for that at decoding and image manipulation. Editors usually transcode the .mov file into a form that is easier to edit with like ProRes for this reason.  

As I posted. The average poster on these forums is just going to complain about performance of h.265. at 4K. The issue is decoding the information.

Amberella has made h.265 encoding on its chips available for some time now but DJI has wisely not introduced it till the P4P and Inspire2 thinking that many of the purchasers of these platforms will be early adopters of cutting edge computers.

Most people are just plain sucked in by bitrate concerns. A talented person like Jim Hare does fantastic work regardless of bit rate because he knows how to use the tools available to him. People should learn from that instead of parroting complaints and imagined problems.

Much of video stuttering is caused by inadequate buffering of the video stream somewhere in the path from media to screen. Yes bitrate is a limitation but its not as simple as some would have you believe.

Mike-the-cat Posted at 2017-1-12 18:29
You'll get quality gains with h.265 but it doesn't halve the bitrate. There is a lot of complex math going on in the background to get the gains in savings and you pay for that at decoding and image manipulation. Editors usually transcode the .mov file into a form that is easier to edit with like ProRes for this reason.  

As I posted. The average poster on these forums is just going to complain about performance of h.265. at 4K. The issue is decoding the information.

Ouch, I get the message ... My doubtful impressions are based on very first encounter with H.265 codec within Premiere Pro CC Export Media territory, and I'm not a pro by any measures. Test was performed with the same default VBR rate for both renders, resulting in impressive reduction of H.265 file size and apparently similar to H.264 image quality, but at the cost of tremendous rendering time. That's all, again first impressions only. I'm really sorry for wearing "The Average Poster" label ...

Mike-the-cat Posted at 2017-1-12 18:29
You'll get quality gains with h.265 but it doesn't halve the bitrate. There is a lot of complex math going on in the background to get the gains in savings and you pay for that at decoding and image manipulation. Editors usually transcode the .mov file into a form that is easier to edit with like ProRes for this reason.  

As I posted. The average poster on these forums is just going to complain about performance of h.265. at 4K. The issue is decoding the information.

Yeah, I have the same process using my RED camera that shoots RAW.  I almost always transcode the footage to ProRes before editing, and then go back and grade the original RAW files after the edit.

I'm still confused as to whether you can shoot 100Mb/S in both H.264 and H.265 as so many people talk about it looking the same but files being smaller.  

Dobmatt Posted at 2017-1-12 22:36
Ouch, I get the message ... My doubtful impressions are based on very first encounter with H.265 codec within Premiere Pro CC Export Media territory, and I'm not a pro by any measures. Test was performed with the same default VBR rate for both renders, resulting in impressive reduction of H.265 file size and apparently similar to H.264 image quality, but at the cost of tremendous rendering time. That's all, again first impressions only. I'm really sorry for wearing "The Average Poster" label  ...

Sorry Dobmatt, no one's busting your chops!   {:4_177:}

Why not to use Avid DNxHR codec, DJI?
I edit my 4K footage on my old laptop (1st gen. dual core core i7) smoothly Only import take too much time

jimhare Posted at 2017-1-12 23:17
Yeah, I have the same process using my RED camera that shoots RAW.  I almost always transcode the footage to ProRes before editing, and then go back and grade the original RAW files after the edit.

I'm still confused as to whether you can shoot 100Mb/S in both H.264 and H.265 as so many people talk about it looking the same but files being smaller.

Good question Jim. I don't know categorically but I think that 100 mbps is the 'in camera' maximum bit rate rather than the 'export bitrate' . An explanation for these terms can be found here:
https://www.vidmuze.com/understanding-bitrate/

I did notice that for the same duration of video. the h.265 file is smaller than a h.265 equivalent.

The main purpose of developing h.265 was to reduce file sizes of larger movies for file sharing purposes. Compression can't improve quality of the raw data (that would be nice but it doesn't happen).

The actual performance depends on the material and the encoder but apparently something changed last year to make widespread release of h.265 more feasible.

One thing is that Intel has incorporated h.265 decoding in its 7th Gen of processors (Kirby Lake) so that decoding of the video stream can be in real time. Will have to wait till late 2017 for these to come on mainstream?

Bottom line, if it looks good who cares what the bit rate is. Your work is lovely even at 720p

Mike-the-cat Posted at 2017-1-11 15:01
another thing - you'd likely have to invest in a new computer to use h.265 at 4K. Its extremely, extremely punishing on the processor. Until they put in specialised DSPs to handle h.265, most people will only work with it on HD video.

Can I ask the dumb question.... why is h.265 so much better?   It seems to be bleeding-edge at this point, not worth it. Looks like computer technology and SSD's storage / transfering aren't there yet

Rich

RichJ53 Posted at 2017-1-15 20:39
Can I ask the dumb question.... why is h.265 so much better?   It seems to be bleeding-edge at this point, not worth it. Looks like computer technology and SSD's storage / transfering aren't there yet

Rich

Most people will continue to use h.264 until hardware decoding  for h.265 is inbuilt into the processor core as it will be from later this year onwards when Kirby Lake makes its way into the broader market.

The advantage is smaller file size - so in future, 4K movies may be reasonably downloaded and stored.

Otherwise, for hobbyists, just wait to grow a year older...and maybe wiser.

Mike-the-cat Posted at 2017-1-15 21:46
Most people will continue to use h.264 until hardware decoding  for h.265 is inbuilt into the processor core as it will be from later this year onwards when Kirby Lake makes its way into the broader market.

The advantage is smaller file size - so in future, 4K movies may be reasonably downloaded and stored.

MTC
I get it.....   The trick will be a new compression that does not give up quality while being easier to handle for us common folk.  Most likely it will be on the new Inspire 3  with all new cameras and processing   

Rich

RichJ53 Posted at 2017-1-15 22:03
MTC
I get it.....   The trick will be a new compression that does not give up quality while being easier to handle for us common folk.  Most likely it will be on the new Inspire 3  with all new cameras and processing   

Rich,

The Amberella chip on board the current craft and the P4P encode fine. Its the DECODING that is very slow when its not hard wired into existing CPUs.

Next step for DJI is perhaps to ditch the gimbal and to go for full electronic image stabilisation. These are new capabilities recently announced by Amberella in their latest chips. We won't see these being incorporated into working designs till late 2018 though...

I own a Samsung NX1, which uses H.265. At first this was a real pain, but once you get used to the workflow, there are a lot of advantages over h.264.

The lack of adaptation of the codec has been a real issue. While PP recently updated their software for native h.265 support, FCXP - still does not.

Here is a good explanation of the H.265 codec:
H.265 codec

One can't really have a conversation about video on the NX1 without first addressing the H.265 high efficiency video codec (HEVC). H.265 is the successor to the virtually universal H.264 codec used by most cameras in this class for the past several years.

The major advantage of H.265 is that it's approximately twice as efficient as its predecessor, making it possible to record video at half the bit rate of H.264 while maintaining the same level of quality. Alternatively, it's possible to maintain the same bit rate used under H.264 but with a substantial increase in video quality.

On the NX1 Samsung has opted for the former approach, choosing to take advantage of the efficient video compression to reduce file size. Empirical data suggests that Samsung's implementation does exactly this. When shooting scenes side by side with the Panasonic GH4 at 4K resolution NX1 files were consistently smaller than the corresponding GH4 files – in some cases as by as much as half. Whether Samsung has managed to maintain the same quality in the process is something we'll look at on the Video Quality page.

Smaller file sizes obviously mean that you can fit more video on a single card, but it also means that you can get away with using slower (i.e. less expensive) cards as well. For example, when shooting 4K video on the GH4 one needs to use UHS Class 3 cards (30MB/s); when shooting 4K video on the NX1 it's possible to use standard SDXC Class 10 cards (10MB/s).

However, what H.265 giveth, H.265 taketh, and there are some definite challenges to using this codec. The primary one: it's new. Although there are software products that work with H.265, as of the time of this review none of the major non-linear editing apps including Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or Avid Media Composer support direct import or editing of the codec.

In fairness, this issue will sort itself out over time as the codec sees wider industry adoption and better software and hardware support. For the time being however, video files from the NX1 need to be converted into some other format for playback and editing.

Samsung provides an application exactly for this purpose: Samsung Movie Converter. It's a very basic program that simply converts H.265 files to H.264 format. Unfortunately, there's not many positive things we can say about it.