August 19, 2020 - Since last year or recently, many people have known that H.266/VVC is the successor to the current High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265/HEVC) that can deliver 30-50% higher compression ratio. But what people don’t know is the specific improvements on its compression algorithm, and what makes it better than H.265, H.264, AV1 and VP9.
The detailed tips, comparisons and proofs are in the post: https://www.videoproc.com/resource/h266-vvc.htm
34 members have joined Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) for the development of this new codec since October 2017. A lot of companies, institutes, universities and non-government organizations have gave direct or indirect supports. VideoProc Team from Digiarty also stands by the future popularization of H.266.
Generally, what makes a new codec worth spreading is the improved compression ratio. It will takes less bit rates for data transmission. Huston Xu, Product Manager of VideoProc added, “At the same quality, VVC guarantees a smaller file size; in a similar way, at the same file size, video encoded with VVC will have incomparable image quality.” Besides, it is now the best option for streaming 4K/8K/16K content on TV, supporting HDR and 360° videos.
To prove such points, VideoProc team has carried out various tests, for example, by comparing VVC with HEVC, H.264 and AV1. And the rough conclusion is as follows:
• Coding efficiency: H.266/VVC > AV1 > HEVC > AVC. But AV1 exceeds H.266 when dealing with 1080p HD or lower-resolution videos. The superiority of VVC is when it encodes/decodes higher resolution videos, such as 4K and above.
• In H.266/VVC, both Intra and Inter video coding algorithms are optimized. It utilizes quad-tree, ternary-tree and binary-tree at the same time, as well as a set of more advanced technologies.
• Encoding/decoding difficulty: H.266 > AV1 > HEVC > AVC
It is hard to say whether the compatibility of VVC will be better that HEVC since HEVC had licensing issues. But it is clear that it would be more difficult and CPU-intensive to encode and decode a H.266/VVC video than AV1, HEVC and H.264 videos. To avoid the problem in advance, Digiarty is developing an efficient VVC converter with the assistant of Level 3 Hardware Acceleration. It will be used to transcode H.266 to H.265/H.264, convert incompatible videos to MP4, WMV, MOV, AVI, MPEG, MKV, ProRes and so on, and make any videos supported by Apple iPhone/iPad, Android devices, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PSP, Roku and so on. Now this converter software is on the way and is expected to be built in VideoProc. Read more about details: https://www.videoproc.com/media-converter/vvc-converter.htm
As for the future of H.266, this firm is neutral but more optimistic. It believes that VVC will take a great role in video compression and UHD data transmission. But it doubts about the possibility of its monopoly position and replacing other existing and future codecs. Instead, it is more convinced that VVC will coexist with HEVC, H.264, VP9, AV1, as well as the upcoming Essential Video Codec (EVC) and Low Complexity Essential Video Codec (LCEVC).
Contact Information
Cecilia Hwung
Digiarty Software
