Video compression efficiency on the new H.266 / VVC codec is doubled without loss of quality

The growing popularity of high-definition videomakes high demands on the volume of Internet traffic and the quality of file compression. Currently, compressed video data makes up about 80% of global traffic on the Internet. The new H.266 / VVC standard, developed and officially announced by the German Fraunhofer Institute, Heinrich Hertz (Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institut, Fraunhofer HHI) is becoming the most effective tool for processing video data.

Previous H. standards264 / Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and H.265 / HEVC, developed with the active participation of Fraunhofer HHI, are currently deployed on 10 billion active computer devices in the world and process up to 90% of video traffic. The new H.266 / VVC standard, in accordance with the official press release, will reduce the amount of video data by 2 times, without compromising image quality.

When developing a new standard, the creatorstook into account the growing popularity of streaming video in 4K and 8K resolution. Over the past three years, high-tech companies such as Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Sony have participated in the development of H.266 / VVC along with the Fraunhofer HHI.

Universal video coding (Versatile VideoCoding, VVC) or H.266 becomes the next-generation video standard and can reduce the bitrate and size of video files by 50%, without compromising quality compared to the previous H.265 standard. So if transmitting video in 4K format, lasting 90 minutes, when transferring using the H.265 standard, 10 GB was required, now, without changing the image quality, it will take only 5 GB.

New standard H.266 is ideal for all types of moving images: from 360-degree high-resolution panoramic images to live broadcasts. In addition, the H.266 codec supports adaptive resolution changes, HDR technology and 10-bit color depth.

The main competitor to H.266 is the AV1 codec, the benefits of which are open source and the absence of compulsory royalties. Nevertheless, preliminary tests showed that the new standard shows significant bitrate savings compared to AV1, especially in the case of 4K UHD files. According to the management of Fraunhofer HHI, the first software, both for encoding and decoding with support for H.266 / VVC, will appear in the fall of 2020.

Source: neowin