Spin Digital Releases a New HEVC Transcoder Optimized for 8K

Berlin, April 30, 2020 —  Spin Digital, a provider of high-performance video codecs, announced today the release of a new version of its HEVC/H.265 codec designed for Ultra-HD (4K, 8K and beyond) transcoding applications.

Spin Enc File v2.0 makes 8K transcoding in the cloud cost effective and, at the same time, produces the quality at bitrate needed for 8K streaming over the Internet.

The transcoder, called Spin Enc File v2.0, is based on a new version of Spin Digital’s software HEVC encoder that has been extensively optimized for high encoding speed while at the same time producing very high quality and compression efficiency.

Spin Enc File includes three main components for high-end transcoding applications:

• SpinDec: a high-performance HEVC decoder with support for professional formats.
• SpinFilter: a set of high-precision and high-performance pre-processing filters for video processing tasks including: resolution scaling, HDR tone mapping, among others.
• SpinEnc: a high-performance and high-quality HEVC encoder.

All these modules have been integrated into the FFmpeg media framework facilitating their use in transcoding workflows and supporting several input and output formats included in FFmpeg.

Spin Enc File v2.0 makes 8K transcoding in the cloud cost effective and, at the same time, produces the quality at bitrate needed for 8K streaming over the internet

Optimized for 8K Cloud Transcoding Applications

In transcoding applications a high-quality source file that has been compressed using a mezzanine codec such as ProRes,  DNxHR, or Cineform, is converted into a distribution format such as HEVC. Optionally, some conversion operations such as chroma subsampling, resolution scaling, and tone mapping are applied before encoding. The entire transcoding application therefore includes: decoding the mezzanine file, performing video processing filters, and encoding in distribution format.

Figure: Transcoding workflow from mezzanine format to HEVC distribution format.

According to Spin Digital’s analysis for 8K video, Spin Digital’s optimized transcoder produces similar quality and compression levels at significantly higher transcoding speeds when compared to open source HEVC solutions (i.e. x265 encoder with slow preset).

As shown in the table below, on a 64-core CPU workstation Spin Enc File v2.0 is able to transcode up to 15.4 8K frames per second (fps) from ProRes to HEVC and 21.4 fps from HEVC-4:4:4 to HEVC. As a result, with Spin Enc File a feature-length 1.5-hour 8K movie at 60 fps can be transcoded in around 4 hours.

Table: Transcoding speed (in fps) when converting from ProRes to HEVC and from HEVC-4:4:4 to HEVC using Spin Enc File and x265. The output files have a very similar objective quality and file size. The experiments were conducted on a 64 core CPU workstation with Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and using FFmpeg v4.3.1.

With Spin Enc File a feature-length 1.5-hour 8K movie at 60 fps can be transcoded in around 4 hours.

When compared to other HEVC encoders such as SVT-HEVC and Nvidia’s NVenc, Spin Digital’s Spin Enc File v2.0 results in higher transcoding speeds and, in addition, higher compression efficiency. More details of a codec comparison analysis can be found in Spin Enc File v2.0 technical specifications: click here to download.

The Best Choice for Creative Studios

Spin Digital’s transcoder supports the HEVC Range Extensions profiles for professional video formats (4:2:2 and 4:4:4, up to 12-bit). In addition, it includes video processing tools required to perform resolution scaling, color space and HDR transfer function conversion, tone mapping, as well as to process 360°/VR content including spherical format conversions.

Flexible HEVC Formats for Different 8K Players

As a flexible software solution, Spin Enc File, supports multiple HEVC formats compatible with different 8K software and hardware media players. These formats include single-slice encoding and the ARIB STD-B32 standard used for 8K broadcast in Japan.

Availability

Spin Enc File v2.0 is available now for licensing.

A demo version or a quote can be requested online.

For more information visit the Spin Enc File webpage.

Trademarks

Spin Digital and Spin Enc File are trademarks of Spin Digital Video Technologies GmbH.

Other trademarks remain the property of their owners, and are used here for descriptive purposes.