Versatile Video Coding


Versatile Video Coding, also known as H.266, MPEG-I Part 3 and Future Video Coding, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team, a united video expert team of the MPEG working group of ISO/IEC JTC 1 and the VCEG working group of ITU-T. It is the successor to High Efficiency Video Coding.

Concept

In October 2015, the MPEG and VCEG formed the Joint Video Exploration Team to evaluate available compression technologies and study the requirements for a next-generation video compression standard. The new algorithms should have a 30–50% better compression rate for the same perceptual quality, with support for lossless and subjectively lossless compression. It should support resolutions from 4K to 16K as well as 360° videos. VVC should support YCbCr 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 with 10 to 16 bits per component, BT.2100 wide color gamut and high dynamic range of more than 16 stops, auxiliary channels, variable and fractional frame rates from 0 to 120 Hz, scalable video coding for temporal, spatial, SNR, color gamut and dynamic range differences, stereo/multiview coding, panoramic formats, and still picture coding. Encoding complexity of several times that of HEVC is expected, depending on the quality of the encoding algorithm. The decoding complexity is expected to be about twice that of HEVC.
VVC development is made using the VVC Test Model, a reference software codebase that was started with a minimal set of coding tools. Further coding tools are added after being tested in Core Experiments. Its predecessor was the Joint Exploration Model, 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, with which the standardization process officially began.
The first working draft of the Versatile Video Coding standard was released in April 2018.
At IBC 2018, a preliminary implementation based on VVC was demonstrated that was said to compress video 40% more efficiently than HEVC.
The final standard was approved on 6 July 2020.

Current schedule

To reduce the risk of the problems seen when licensing HEVC implementations, for VVC a new group called the Media Coding Industry Forum was founded.However, MC-IF has no official power over the standardization process, which is still based on pure technical merit.
With 4 companies vying to be the patent pool administrator for VVC, the same problems that plagued AVC and HEVC licensing seem to be repeating themselves.