Versatile Video Coding

Last updated

VVC / H.266 / MPEG-I Part 3
Versatile video coding
Versatile Video Coding (logo).svg
StatusIn force
Year started2017
First published2020
Latest version3rd Edition
29 September 2023
Organization ITU-T, ISO, IEC
Committee SG16 (Secretary: Simao Campos) (VCEG), MPEG
Base standards H.261, H.262, H.263, H.264, H.265, MPEG-1
Domain Video compression
License RAND
Website www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.266

Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, [1] ISO/IEC 23090-3, [2] and MPEG-I Part 3, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), [3] a joint video expert team of the VCEG working group of ITU-T Study Group 16 and the MPEG working group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. It is the successor to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, also known as ITU-T H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2). It was developed with two primary goals improved compression performance and support for a very broad range of applications. [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Concept

In October 2015, the MPEG and VCEG formed the Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) to evaluate available compression technologies and study the requirements for a next-generation video compression standard. The new standard has about 50% better compression rate for the same perceptual quality compared to HEVC, [7] with support for lossless and subjectively lossless compression. It supports resolutions ranging from very low resolution up to 4K and 16K as well as 360° videos. VVC supports YCbCr 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 with 8–10 bits per component, BT.2100 wide color gamut and high dynamic range (HDR) of more than 16 stops (with peak brightness of 1,000, 4,000 and 10,000 nits), auxiliary channels (for depth, transparency, etc.), variable and fractional frame rates from 0 to 120 Hz and higher, scalable video coding for temporal (frame rate), spatial (resolution), SNR, color gamut and dynamic range differences, stereo/multiview coding, panoramic formats, and still-picture coding. Work on high bit depth support (12 to 16 bits per component) started in October 2020 [8] and was included in the second edition published in 2022. Encoding complexity of several times (up to ten times) that of HEVC is expected, depending on the quality of the encoding algorithm (which is outside the scope of the standard). The decoding complexity is about twice that of HEVC.

VVC development has been made using the VVC Test Model (VTM), a reference software codebase that was started with a minimal set of coding tools. Further coding tools have been added after being tested in Core Experiments (CEs). Its predecessor was the Joint Exploration Model (JEM), an experimental software codebase that was based on the reference software used for HEVC.

History

JVET issued a final Call for Proposals in October 2017, and the standardization process officially began in April 2018 when the first working draft of the standard was produced. [9] [10]

At IBC 2018, a preliminary implementation based on VVC was demonstrated that was said to compress video 40% more efficiently than HEVC. [11]

The content of the final standard was approved on 6 July 2020. [7] [12] [13]

Schedule

Licensing

To reduce the risk of the problems seen when licensing HEVC implementations, for VVC a new group called the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) was founded. [15] [16] However, MC-IF had no power over the standardization process, which was based on technical merit as determined by consensus decisions of JVET. [17]

Four companies were initially vying to be patent pool administrators for VVC, in a situation similar to the previous AVC [18] and HEVC [19] codecs. Two companies later formed patent pools: Access Advance and MPEG LA (now known as Via-LA). [20]

Access Advance published their licensing fee in April 2021. [21] Via-LA published their licensing fee in January 2022. [22]

Companies known not to be a part of the Access Advance or Via-LA patent pools as of November 2023 are: Apple, Canon, Ericsson, Fraunhofer, Google, Huawei, Humax, Intel, LG, Interdigital, Maxell, Microsoft, Oppo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.

Adoption

Software

Encoders/decoders

Players

Hardware

CompanyChip / ArchitectureTypeThroughputRef
Allegro DVTAL-D320Decoder IP core 8K@120 [38] [39]
MediaTek Pentonic 2000Decoder [40]
Pentonic 10004K@144 [41]
Pentonic 700 [42]
Realtek RTD1319DSet-top box SoC 4K@60 [43]
VeriSiliconHantro VC9000DDecoder8K@120 [44]
Hantro VC9800D [45]

Broadcast

The Brazilian SBTVD Forum will adopt the MPEG-I VVC codec in its forthcoming broadcast television system, TV 3.0, expected to launch in 2024. It will be used alongside MPEG-5 LCEVC as a video base layer encoder for broadcast and broadband delivery. [46]

The European organization DVB Project, which governs digital television broadcasting standards, announced 24 February 2022 that VVC was now part of its tools for broadcasting. [47] The DVB tuner specification used throughout Europe, Australia, and many other regions has been revised to support the VVC (H.266) video codec, the successor to HEVC. [48]

See also

Notes

  1. License withholds patent rights and is not OSI-approved.

Related Research Articles

H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moving Picture Experts Group</span> Alliance of working groups to set standards for multimedia coding

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and file formats for various applications. Together with JPEG, MPEG is organized under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 – Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video codec</span> Digital video processing

A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, codec is a portmanteau of encoder and decoder, while a device that only compresses is typically called an encoder, and one that only decompresses is a decoder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FFmpeg</span> Multimedia framework

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects and standards compliance.

H.261 is an ITU-T video compression standard, first ratified in November 1988. It is the first member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group. It was the first video coding standard that was useful in practical terms.

Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS) refers to the digital audio and digital video series compression standard formulated by the Audio and Video coding standard workgroup of China. Work began in 2002, and three generations of standards were published.

MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine transform (DCT), similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 Part 2 and H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2.

libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data.

The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio, and other signals. It is responsible for standardization of the "H.26x" line of video coding standards, the "T.8xx" line of image coding standards, and related technologies.

In video coding, a group of pictures, or GOP structure, specifies the order in which intra- and inter-frames are arranged. The GOP is a collection of successive pictures within a coded video stream. Each coded video stream consists of successive GOPs, from which the visible frames are generated. Encountering a new GOP in a compressed video stream means that the decoder doesn't need any previous frames in order to decode the next ones, and allows fast seeking through the video.

Gary Joseph Sullivan is an American electrical engineer who led the development of the AVC, HEVC, and VVC video coding standards and created the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) API/DDI video decoding feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system. He is currently Director of Video Research and Standards at Dolby Laboratories and is the chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 and of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG).

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding. In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD, and unlike the primarily 8-bit AVC, HEVC's higher fidelity Main 10 profile has been incorporated into nearly all supporting hardware.

Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP9</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2013

VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.

Nvidia NVENC is a feature in Nvidia graphics cards that performs video encoding, offloading this compute-intensive task from the CPU to a dedicated part of the GPU. It was introduced with the Kepler-based GeForce 600 series in March 2012.

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) is a non-profit industry consortium headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and formed to develop open, royalty-free technology for multimedia delivery. It uses the ideas and principles of open web standard development to create video standards that can serve as alternatives to the hitherto dominant standards of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. In 2018, Facebook conducted testing that approximated real-world conditions, and the AV1 reference encoder achieved 34%, 46.2%, and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LCEVC</span> Video coding standard

Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC) is a ISO/IEC video coding standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) under the project name MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC.

References

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Further reading