Faced with Apple's competition for the live streaming platform, Yunfan accelerates the launch of the first H.265 live video transmission solution

Recently, media reported that Apple is rectifying social networks that provide payment services between users in China, and has issued notices to many domestic social network companies, requiring application platforms to comply with the App Store regulations and prohibit the reward function within the application, including live broadcast platforms. It is understood that according to Apple's standards, as long as the App has a paid item, then after it is launched on the iOS platform, Apple will take 30% of the revenue, "regardless of whether it is advertising implantation within the App or in-App purchase items."

After the iOS system stopped the WeChat reward function, live broadcast platforms also faced competition. Apple emphasized that all apps should abide by the rules of the App Store. If developers ignore the rules, they will face the risk of being unable to update or even being forced to be removed from the shelves. At present, live broadcast platforms have not been charged "tolls", but the risks are obviously not negligible.

We know that the live broadcast industry is becoming more and more mature in China. Data shows that by the end of 2016, there were about 200 online live broadcast platforms, with a market transaction volume of about 35 billion yuan and more than 325 million users, forming live broadcast modes such as shows, games, and outdoor broadcasts, and there are larger platforms such as Huya Live YY, Douyu, Inke Live, and Huajiao Live. The market value is rising steadily, and the income of live broadcast platforms is also considerable, but due to the high content costs (anchors) and bandwidth costs, many live broadcast platforms have been slow to make a profit. Apple's share is based on revenue, which has nothing to do with net profit. This also means that once Apple publicly starts to participate in the live broadcast "reward" share, the losses of live broadcast platforms will be further widened.

However, there is also good news in China. We know that CDN/bandwidth is one of the main costs in the video industry, and emerging CDN manufacturers represented by Yunfan Acceleration have always been committed to providing higher value to Internet companies such as live broadcasting and reducing bandwidth costs, and constantly making technological breakthroughs and model innovations. The CDN+P2P fusion solution it launched last year can reduce bandwidth costs for enterprises by more than 50%. It is understood that it saves more than 100 million yuan in bandwidth costs for a certain customer annually. As a CDN service provider, it does not try to make customers consume more traffic, but instead makes suggestions for them to reduce bandwidth. Its founder and CEO Tong Yongyue has repeatedly emphasized that Yunfan Acceleration hopes to make the costs of video operation companies more reasonable, so that more budgets can be used for refined operations or the launch of better content, rather than being tied up by CDN and not daring to develop freely.

Recently, it announced that it has solved the problem of real-time encoding, decoding and transmission of H.265 in live broadcasts, and launched a full H.265 video live broadcast transmission solution. Enterprises using its CDN can support H.265, which is convenient and fast and can reduce bandwidth by more than 30%.

What is H.265 Standard

Nowadays, users have higher and higher requirements for video quality, and HD and 4K have become the mainstream development direction of current video services. The improvement of video clarity has brought about a substantial increase in data volume, while the data compression capabilities of existing coding standards (such as H.264, MPEG-2, etc.) are difficult to grow synchronously. Therefore, in the existing network environment, many high-quality videos have to lower their quality standards and use various methods to reduce the bit rate, sacrificing quality in exchange for smooth playback.

In this context, the market calls for a new video coding technology that can provide a higher compression ratio to cope with the development of current video services, and the H.265 (full name of the standard is High Efficiency Video Coding) video coding standard came into being. H.265 aims to transmit higher quality videos in a limited bandwidth environment, and only about half of the original bandwidth is needed to play the same quality video. This also means that in the existing network environment, online video viewing will be smoother, enterprises will pay less bandwidth costs, and better videos (HD, UHD 4k) will be closer and closer to us.

The H.265 standard uses a hybrid coding framework similar to H.264, but on this basis, H.265 has made a lot of technical improvements, among which the more representative ones include: large-size quadtree coding structure, multi-angle intra-frame prediction technology, motion estimation fusion technology, adaptive motion vector prediction compensation technology, loop filtering, and entropy coding technology.

H.265 has excellent network adaptability, parallel processing capabilities and compression efficiency, but the algorithm complexity of H.265 is 2 to 10 times higher than that of H.264. The real-time encoding of H.265 places higher requirements on the terminal hardware performance. Although video platforms such as iQiyi, LeTV and PPTV have announced support for H.265 high-definition video playback, the H.265 standard has not yet been popularized on a large scale in the video industry, and mobile devices still have real-time encoding and decoding problems. The H.265 standard is even less common in the live broadcast field. Many CDN manufacturers have expressed their support for H.265 in their publicity, but few have complete solutions.

Yunfan Accelerator fully considers the status of customers' existing equipment networks and the future expansion capabilities of the system. It is the first domestic company to launch a video live encoding and decoding and transmission acceleration solution that combines H.265 with the existing H.264: H.264 encoding and streaming--> cloud-to-H.265--> transmission of H.265 code stream--> terminal decoding and H.265 playback. Compared with the H.265 live transmission solution proposed by other manufacturers (H.265 encoding live broadcast-->H.265 decoding and viewing), it is more convenient and can better guarantee video quality. Because H.265 encoding puts a lot of pressure on the mobile phone CPU calculation, it is currently impossible to encode in real time with high quality, so it can only be shallowly encoded, resulting in poor image quality. It can be said to be a castrated version of the H.265 solution, which does not reflect the high-quality and low-bandwidth characteristics of H.265.

The process of Yunfan's H.265 acceleration solution is as follows:

A. The H.264+aac audio and video encoding solution is still used on the streaming end to push high-definition H.264 live video streams. To solve the problem of smooth transmission of high-definition bitrate in a weak network environment, the host-side streaming acceleration SDK can be used;

B. Cloud transcoding, H.264 video stream enters the Yunfan accelerated live cloud server, starts real-time transcoding from H.264 to H.265, can output H.264 and H.265 live streams at the same time, supports H.265 screenshots, H.265 recording flv, MP4 for subsequent on-demand playback.

CH264\H.265 decoding and playback, through the cloud transcoding platform, output H.264, H.265 different video streams at the same time, and distribute them to the terminal through Yunfan accelerated CDN. Through certain agreed specifications, CDN can intelligently identify and respond to video resources in different encoding formats. Android, iOS, and OTT clients that support H.265 videos can access H.265 videos, and clients and flash terminals that do not support H.265 videos can access the original H.264 code stream for playback. For H.265 decoding SDK, enterprises can use the open source H.265 decoder released on the Internet, or they can choose Yunfan H.265 decoding SDK. We have optimized many technologies to reduce the CPU usage of the software decoding process and reduce the heating of mobile phones.

Difficulty of the solution : Real-time transcoding. The algorithm complexity of H.265 encoding is 2 to 10 times higher than that of H.264, and real-time encoding is difficult. Yunfan Accelerator has achieved a breakthrough through optimization and supports a single server to convert 100-128 H.265 live streams, with a compression rate of 30%-50% compared to H.264.

Advantages of Yunfan H.265 acceleration solution:

1. Use CDN to support H.265, convenient and fast

Since the devices currently used in the market mainly support the H.264 format, the reality is that all devices cannot be upgraded and replaced immediately. However, in order to give full play to the low bit rate and high quality technical characteristics of H.265, the H.265 encoding standard is used in the mid-transmission process. Through an encoding and transcoding process, high-quality video signals are transmitted at low bit rates, while retaining high-quality images. Without affecting the existing H.264 system, the new and old technologies are compatible and fully connected. Enterprises use Yunfan to accelerate CDN to achieve H.265 transmission live broadcast, which is convenient and fast.

2. Reduce costs

Cloud transcoding enables real-time conversion of H.264 to H.265, with a compression rate of about 20-50%. Overall, the original video quality can be maintained during transmission, and the bandwidth can be reduced by more than 30%, saving bandwidth costs for enterprises.

Summary: At present, H.264 real-time software encoding is very mature. H.265 encoding puts a lot of computing pressure on mobile phones and cannot encode in real time with high quality. However, H.265 real-time decoding does not have a CPU bottleneck. By combining the promotion of H.265 and the existing H.264, Yunfan accelerated CDN can support H.265 without changing other systems. It is convenient and fast.

With the upgrade of hardware and technology, I believe that H.265 is likely to become mainstream in the next five or even ten years.