The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute has announced a new standard video encoder that promises to reduce streaming by 50%.
According to the announcement, the full name of the encoder is H.266 / Versatile Video Coding (VVC), and is designed to succeed H.264 / Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and H.265 / High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) which combine approximately the 90% of world transmission and compression of digital video on the market today.
While HEVC was first released in 2013, the coder proved controversial due to a patent dispute. That is why AVC, the predecessor of HEVC, remains the most dominant model, despite its first release in 2003.
However, the Fraunhofer Institute says VVC could be a step forward for the industry, as almost every major hardware and software company is currently linked to a messy patent system.
According to Frauhofer and due to the general requirement of data reduction, H.266 / VVC makes it more efficient to transmit video in networks mobile telephony, where data capacity is limited. For example, the previous H.265 / HEVC standard requires 10 gigabytes of data to transmit 90 minutes of UHD video. With this new technology, only 5 gigabytes of data are required to achieve the same quality.
Επειδή το H.266 / VVC αναπτύχθηκε με γνώμονα το content βίντεο υψηλής ανάλυσης, το νέο πρότυπο είναι ιδιαίτερα ωφέλιμο κατά τη ροή βίντεο 4K ή 8K σε τηλεοράσεις επίπεδης οθόνης. Επιπλέον, το H.266 / VVC είναι ιδανικό για όλους τους τύπους κινούμενων εικόνων: από πανοραμικές φωτογραφίες 360°, υψηλής ανάλυσης, έως media με χρήση κοινής οθόνης.
The Fraunhofer Institute's parent company, the Fraunhofer Society, which is made up of many smaller institutes such as Fraunhofer HHI and others, is best known in the world of digital media as the creator of MP3. He also contributed significantly to the creation of H.264 and H.265.
Thus, this particular research organization has a long and successful history in data compression. However, Fraunhofer does not mention in its press release the existence of AV1, an open source, royalty-free competitor. AV1 and its predecessor, VP9, are integral to streaming 4K content from platforms like YouTube, so it's likely that these standards will continue to compete with each other for years to come.
It is not clear to what extent AV1, AVC, HEVC and VVC will coexist in the future, but Fraunhofer claims that Media Coding Industry Forum, an industrial consortium, along with Apple, Sony and other manufacturers, is currently working on a chip designed to support VVC in hardware.
