Hive Media Encoding Guide
Introduction
One of the most important tasks when using your Hive media player is to make sure that your media is encoded correctly before uploading it to the player. While the players support 4 different video codecs - H265 (HEVC), H264, Avolites Aim and Notch LC - the only codec that fully supports all the features of the system is H265 (HEVC) so this is the codec that we recommend wherever possible. H265 does not support Alpha channels, so if you need to encode media with an alpha channel then you should use Notch LC or Avolites Aim. H265 also known as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) can be created in most video software, but it is important to get the settings correct for the best quality, the correct settings are listed below, the only thing you have to decide is what bitrate to set it to - this depends on the resolution of the content and the complexity (ammount of movement) of the content.
H265 (HEVC) Settings
VIDEO
Video Codec: H265 / HEVC
Profile: Main (or Main10 for 10bit content)
Level: 6.2
Tier: High
Keyframe Distance (or G.O.P) 1 (*see below)
Bitrate Encoding: CBR (Constant Bitrate)
Target Bitrate: 50Mbps - 800Mbps (depending on content)
AUDIO
Audio Codec: AAC
Sample Rate: 48KHz
Channels: 2 - 64
Bitrate: 192 kbps - 320 kbps
The keyframe distance of 1 means that every frame is a full frame of video. This is very important to enable perfect syncing of videos between devices. “Normal” H265 files have a much larger keyframe distance (often 15 or higher) and whilst these will play in a Hive player, you will not be able to sync the video between devices.