HEVC | H.264 and macOS 10.14 Mojave

MacBook Pro 2018 15-inch 2018

macOS Mojave 10.14  Beta (18A353d)

2.9GHz Intel Core i9 6-core

32 GB 2.4GHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 560X 4GB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1.5GB

4K

Keep in mind macOS 10.14 Mojave is still in Beta form.

That said, let's take a look at how 3840x2160p HEVC/H.265 video is handled by QuickTime X.

4K AVC

4K HEVC

Both use a surprising amount of processing power from the AMD Radeon Pro 560X 4GB graphics unit. Which of course may come down to the OS being beta, yet considering that H.264 and H.265 are hardware accelerated within QuickTime X the data remains questionable.

Notably, even though there is high GPU usage the CPU remains virtually untouched, proving video decoding is correctly offloaded to the GPU. Also, throughout the viewing process neither of the two built in fans had to increase in speed, leading to a silent experience especially important when consuming media.

Zero CPU usage, a beautiful sight.

8K

For the sake of it I converted Jacob's new 8K 60fps footage into HEVC and gave my computer a heart attack. Unsurprisingly the GPU got pegged and the originally fluid 60p footage now looked like 24p with a handful of dropped frames. Oh well.

8K HEVC