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 codec's full name is H.266 / Versatile Video Coding (VVC), and it is designed to be the successor to the H.264 standards / Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and H.265 / High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) combining approx. 90% of world transmission and compressionof 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 that VVC could be a way forward for the industry, as almost every major hardware company and software is currently tied to a messy patent royalty system.
According to Frauhofer and due to the general data reduction requirement, H.266 / VVC makes video transmission more efficient on mobile networks where data capacity is limited. For example, the previous H.265 / HEVC standard required 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.
Because H.266 / VVC was developed with high definition video content in mind analysiss, the new standard is particularly beneficial when streaming 4K or 8K video to flat screen TVs. In addition, H.266 / VVC is ideal for all types of moving images: from 360° panoramic, high-resolution photos, to media using a shared screen.
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 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 competitor that does not require exploitation rights. The AV1 and its predecessor, VP9, are an integral part of 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.
