Nimble Streamer HEVC (H.265) Support

Efficient codec can be used for both input and output

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is an advanced video compression standard that offers better compression than its predecessors. This codec enables users to stream HD and 4K content with less data, resulting in a faster and more efficient streaming experience. Additionally, HEVC reduces the amount of bandwidth required for streaming by up to 50% compared to other video codecs. This allows viewers to access higher quality video while using the same amount of data. The improved compression also provides increased flexibility when it comes to playback devices and platforms.

With Chrome browser support for HEVC on a wide range of devices, HEVC has become increasingly popular. HEVC compatibility with a variety of platforms and devices make it an ideal choice for streaming service providers who wish to provide a high quality viewing experience.

Nimble Streamer offers a variety of useful features and capabilities when it comes to HEVC transmuxing and transcoding for streaming live and VOD media.

Live Streaming HEVC

Nimble Streamer supports many different live streaming scenarios.

Input protocols

Users can utilize the following delivery methods.

• RTSP from published and pulled sources.
• RTMP from published and pulled sources
  HEVC is delivered using Enhanced RTMP spec.
  Read our annoucement about this spec and related functionality.
• SRT via all modes.
• RIST via all modes.
• MPEG-TS via both UDP and HTTP.
• WebRTC ingest only from Apple devices.

Transmuxing and transcoding

Input data can be easily repackaged into any of the protocols stated in the "Output protocols" section. Due to Nimble Streamer efficiency, this requires low consumption of CPU and RAM usage.

If you want to make any kind of alteration to your content, Transcoder for Nimble Streamer offers the ability to tailor-content before it is packaged into necessary protocols.

Transcoding is available as premium add on to Nimble Streamer available through subscription. The Live Transcoder capabilities allows performing both decoding and encoding of HEVC.

Decoding can be done by

• Software decoder
• Intel® Quick Sync technology for hardware and software on Linux and Windows.
• NVidia® NVENC hardware acceleration for both Linux and Windows.
  You can take a look at stress-testing of Tesla M60 GPU to see some benchmarks of its performance.

Encoding is currently supported via these encoders

• Quick Sync hardware acceleration
• NVENC hardware acceleration
  Check our review of NVENC encoding on Amazon EC2 GPU which describes types of instances which can be used for efficient GPU HEVC encoding.
• SVT-HEVC software encoder

Nimble Streamer Live Transcoder has a web UI that provides easy-to-use drag and-drop workflows to apply transcoding scenarios across various servers in only a few clicks.

Advanced filtering with FFmpeg filters allows transforming content in various ways as well. Some examples are changing the video resize, graphic overlays, picture-in-picture, key frames alignments, audio re-sampling etc.

Please refer to Nimble Transcoder documentation reference for more details.

Output protocols

Users can deliver HEVC outside using the following methods.

• HLS with fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and MPEG2TS containers. It has full support for ABR.
• Read How to Create a Live HLS Feed With HEVC article by Jan Ozer about HEVC HLS streaming.
• Apple Low Latency HLS with MPEGTS and fMP4(CMAF) containers.
• MPEG-DASH is codec-agnostic so it supports live H.265 transmuxing output, having support for ABR.
• RTSP is available for playback.
• RTMP is available for playback and re-publishing.
  HEVC is handled using Enhanced RTMP spec.
• RTSP can also be republished to other servers. This allows building HEVC-enabled CDNs.
• SLDP can deliver content with multiple codecs, including HEVC.
• MPEG-TS output is available for UDP and HTTP delivery.
• SRT via all modes.
• CDN-friendly streaming setup can be set up for outgoing MPEG-DASH and HLS streams.

DVR for HEVC

HEVC can be recorded and played with DVR feature set via HLS protocol. Both fMP4 and MPEG2TS containers are supported.

HEVC for Video-on-Demand

Nimble Streamer provides efficient streaming of H.265-encoded video in VOD mode via both MPEG-DASH and HLS.

• MP4 transmuxing to DASH is effectively re-packaged with low resource usage.
• MP4 transmuxing to HLS also supports HEVC input.
• Fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and MPEG2TS containers are supported for HEVC VOD HLS.
• Remote HTTP storage support allows to effectively stream files, those size exceeds available file system capacity.
• Adaptive bitrate is available via SMIL files support.

Nimble DRM

Nimble Streamer DRM Nimble Streamer DRM also provides protection with digital rights management.

• Google Widevine for MPEG-DASH via BuyDRM, EZDRM, SigmaDRM, PallyCon and Widevine Cloud Service.
• Microsoft Playready for MPEG-DASH via BuyDRM, EZDRM, SigmaDRM and PallyCon.
• Apple FairPlay for HLS via BuyDRM, EZDRM, SigmaDRM and PallyCon.
• All encryption works for H.265/HEVC and H.264/AVC.

Nimble Paywall Capabilities for HEVC

The following features and capabilities are available in Nimble Streamer for building paywalls for HEVC.

• Hot-linking protection to avoid media links hi-jacking.
• Pay-per-view framework for controlling playback in pay-per-view, pay-per-minute, monthly subscription and other scenarios.
• Geo-location and IP ranges restriction.
• User-Agent block
• SSL streaming supportis also available.
• Paywall feature set is applicable for all output protocols.