Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, ISO/IEC 23090-3, and MPEG-I Part 3, is a

video compression standard A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content (such as in a data file or bitstream). It typically uses a standardized video compression algori ...

finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), a joint video expert team 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 ...

. 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 coding format, 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 ...

(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.

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, 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 YCbCr, Y′CbCr, or Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr, also written as YCBCR or Y′CBCR, is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in video and digital photography systems. Y′ is the luma component and CB and CR are the blue-diff ...

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 1000, 4000 and 10000

nits The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are the central government-owned-public technical institutes under the ownership of Ministry of Education, Government of India. They are governed by the National Institutes of Technology, Science ...

), 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 compar ...

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

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 IBC is an initialism that can stand for: Broadcasting *Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation, Channel 13, Philippines * International Beacon Project, Worldwide network of radio propagation beacons *International Broadcast Centre *International ...

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 were later reported to be forming pools: Access Advance and

MPEG LA MPEG LA is an American company based in Denver, Colorado that licenses 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. History MPEG LA ...

. Access Advance has already published the amount of the required license fee.

Adoption

Software

Encoders/decoders *

Fraunhofer HHI The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, HHI, also known as Fraunhofer HHI or Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, is an organization of the Fraunhofer Society based in Berlin. The institute engages in applied re ...

released an open source VVC encoder called VVenC and an open source decoder called VVdeCVVC VTM reference software
*

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the w ...

Media Lab supports VVC in a real time decoder and the Tencent Cloud service supports it with transcoding and streaming in its cloud infrastructure. * uvg266 open source encod

Players *Spin Digital sells a real time VVC Video decoder, decoder and player for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

devices. *

MX Player MX Player is an Indian video streaming and video on demand platform developed by MX Media & Entertainment (formerly J2 Interactive). It has over 280 million users globally. The platform currently operates on an ad-supported model and has a stre ...

was reported to deliver content in VVC to up to 20% of its mobile customers.

Hardware

Broadcast

The Brazilian SBTVD forum selected VVC for Brazil's upcoming TV 3.0. 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 LC EVC as a video base layer encoder for

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

and

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

delivery. The European organization DVB Project, which governs

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

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 th ...

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

DVB Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

tuner specification used throughout Europe, Australia, and many other regions has been revised to support the VVC (H.266) video codec, the successor to

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

References

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