Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, ISO/IEC 23090-3, and MPEG-I Part 3, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) of the

VCEG The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group (VCEG, also known as Question 6) is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio ...

working group of

ITU-T Study Group 16 The ITU-T Study Group 16 (SG16) is a statutory group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with multimedia coding, systems and applications, such as video coding standards. It is responsible for standardization of ...

and the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

working group of

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, entitled ''Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information'', is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the I ...

. It is the successor to

High Efficiency Video Coding 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 (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compa ...

(HEVC, also known as ITU-T H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2). It was developed with two primary goalsimproved compression performance and support for a very broad range of applications.

Concept

In October 2015, the

and

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, with support for lossless and lossy compression. It supports resolutions ranging from very low resolution up to 4K and

16K 16K resolution is a display resolution with approximately 16,000 pixels horizontally. The most commonly discussed 16K resolution as of 2025, is , which doubles the pixel count of 8K resolution, 8K UHD in each dimension, for a total of four tim ...

as well as 360° videos. VVC supports

YCbCr YCbCr, Y′CbCr, also written as YCBCR or Y′CBCR, is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in digital video and digital photography, photography systems. Like YPbPr, YPBPR, it is based on RGB primaries; the two ...

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 and was included in the second edition published in 2022. Encoding complexity of several times (up to ten times) that of

HEVC 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 (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In co ...

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

. Like its predecessor, VVC uses motion-compensated DCT

video coding A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format of digital video content, such as in a data file or bitstream. It typically uses a standardized video compression algorithm, most commonly based on ...

. While HEVC supports integer

discrete cosine transform A discrete cosine transform (DCT) expresses a finite sequence of data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequency, frequencies. The DCT, first proposed by Nasir Ahmed (engineer), Nasir Ahmed in 1972, is a widely ...

(DCT) square block sizes between 4×4 and 32×32, VVC adds support for non-square DCT rectangular block sizes. VVC also introduces several

intra-frame Intra-frame coding is a data compression technique used within a video frame, enabling smaller file sizes and lower bitrates, with little or no loss in quality. Since neighboring pixels within an image are often very similar, rather than storing ...

prediction modes based on these rectangular DCT blocks to provide improved

motion compensation Motion compensation in computing is an algorithmic technique used to predict a frame in a video given the previous and/or future frames by accounting for motion of the camera and/or objects in the video. It is employed in the encoding of video ...

prediction.

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. At IBC 2018, a preliminary implementation based on VVC was demonstrated that was said to compress video 40% more efficiently than HEVC. The content of the final standard was approved on 6 July 2020.

Schedule

* October 2017: Call for proposals * April 2018: Evaluation of the proposals received and first draft of the standard * July 2019: Ballot issued for committee draft * October 2019: Ballot issued for draft international standard * 6 July 2020: Completion of final standard

Licensing

To reduce the risk of the problems seen when licensing

implementations, for VVC a new group called the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) was founded. However, MC-IF had no power over the standardization process, which was based on technical merit as determined by consensus decisions of JVET. Four companies were initially vying to be patent pool administrators for VVC, in a situation similar to the previous AVC and HEVC codecs. Two companies later formed patent pools: Access Advance and

MPEG LA MPEG LA was an American company based in Denver, Colorado that licensed patent pools covering essential patents required for use of the MPEG-2, MPEG-4, IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC, MVC, MPEG-2 Systems, AVC/H.264 and HEVC standards. Via Licensin ...

(now known as Via-LA). Access Advance published their licensing fee in April 2021. Via-LA published their licensing fee in January 2022. Companies known not to be a part of the Access Advance or Via-LA patent pools as of May 2025 are: Apple, Canon, Ericsson, Fraunhofer, Google, Huawei, Intel, Interdigital, LG, Maxell, Microsoft, Nokia, Oppo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.

Adoption

Software

Encoders/decoders * Fraunhofer HHI released a source-available encoder called VVenC and decoder called VVdeC *
Fraunhofer Versatile Video Encoder (VVenC)
*
Fraunhofer Versatile Video Decoder (VVdeC)VVC VTM reference software
*

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

Media Lab offers a real time decoder and the Tencent Cloud service offers transcoding and streaming in its cloud infrastructure.
uvg266
open source encoder *

ffmpeg 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 vide ...

starting with version 7.0 supports experimental decoding. Version 7.1 elevated support to official status. ** LAV Filters, ffmpeg based

DirectShow DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...

splitter and decoders for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, supports demuxing and decoding starting with version 0.79. *OpenVVC, an incomplete open-source VVC decoder library licensed under LGPLv2.1 Players *Spin Digital sells a real time

decoder Decoder may refer to: Technology * Audio decoder converts digital audio to analog form * Binary decoder, digital circuits such as 1-of-N and seven-segment decoders * Decompress (compression decoder), converts compressed data (e.g., audio/video/i ...

and player for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

devices. * Elmedia Player added support in July, 2023. * MPC-HC (clsid2's fork) starting with version 2.2.0. * MPC-BE starting with version 1.7.0. * Zoom Player Steam Edition starting with version v19 beta 6 with the help of LAV Filters v0.79.

Hardware

Broadcast

The Brazilian

SBTVD ISDB-T International, also known in Brazil as Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital (SBTVD; ), is a technical standard for digital television broadcast used in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Botswana, Chile, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Costa Rica, ...

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 Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

and

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

delivery. The European organization DVB Project, which governs

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

broadcasting

standard Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object ...

s, announced 24 February 2022 that VVC was now part of its tools for broadcasting. 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

Notes

References

External links

VVC website at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute
wit
source code of: VTM
or VVdeC or VVenC
Stand by for ITU H.266 compression

MPEG - Versatile Video Coding

Finalisation of VVC
{{ISO standards H.26x MPEG Open standards covered by patents Video codecs Video compression