In today's article we are going to delve into the fascinating world of Versatile Video Coding. We will learn about its origin, its practical applications and its relevance today. Versatile Video Coding is a topic that has captured the attention of experts and fans alike, and its study and understanding are essential to understand its impact on different aspects of our daily lives. Through this article, we will dive into its details, explore its implications and discover new aspects that will help us better understand the world around us. Get ready to explore a fascinating topic that will undoubtedly leave you with a new perspective on Versatile Video Coding.
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] 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]
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 lossy 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.
Like its predecessor, VVC uses motion-compensated DCTvideo coding. While HEVC supports integer discrete cosine transform (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 prediction modes based on these rectangular DCT blocks to provide improved motion compensation prediction.[9]
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.[10][11]
At IBC 2018, a preliminary implementation based on VVC was demonstrated that was said to compress video 40% more efficiently than HEVC.[12]
The content of the final standard was approved on 6 July 2020.[7][13][14]
Schedule
October 2017: Call for proposals
April 2018: Evaluation of the proposals received and first draft of the standard[15]
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 HEVC implementations, for VVC a new group called the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) was founded.[16][17] However, MC-IF had no power over the standardization process, which was based on technical merit as determined by consensus decisions of JVET.[18]
Four companies were initially vying to be patent pool administrators for VVC, in a situation similar to the previous AVC[19] and HEVC[20] codecs. Two companies later formed patent pools: Access Advance and MPEG LA (now known as Via-LA).[21]
Access Advance published their licensing fee in April 2021.[22] Via-LA published their licensing fee in January 2022.[23]
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
Content providers
In 2021 MX Player[24] was reported to deliver content in VVC to up to 20% of its mobile customers.[25]
ffmpeg starting with version 7.0 supports experimental decoding.[30] Version 7.1 elevated support to official status.[31] Support for PALETTE[32] is currently missing.[33]
LAV Filters, ffmpeg based DirectShow splitter and decoders for Windows, supports demuxing and decoding starting with version 0.79.[34]
OpenVVC,[35] an incomplete open-source VVC decoder library licensed under LGPLv2.1[36]
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.[55]
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.[56]
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.[57]
^Feldman, Christian (7 May 2019). "Video Engineering Summit East 2019 – AV1/VVC Update". New York. Archived from the original on 20 June 2019. Retrieved 20 June 2019. No change to the standardization has been done, so it could theoretically happen that the same thing with HEVC happens again. No measures have been done to prevent that, unfortunately. Also, JVET is not directly responsible; they are just a technical committee. (…) There is the Media Coding Industry Forum (…), but they don't have any real power.