International. The new Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard advances the state of the art of video compression and has unprecedented application versatility. It has the flexibility to enable emerging applications like 360-degree omnidirectional immersive multimedia, remote screen sharing, cloud-based collaboration, cloud gaming, and region-based extraction and merging.
It also offers enhanced quality encoding for ultra high definition (UHD) and high dynamic range (HDR) video, as well as conventional video encoding applications.
The team of experts responsible for VVC development recently agreed on the technical specification of the new standard, moving VVC towards final approval by the International Telecommunication Union, ITU, with the 'consent' to enter the final 'last call' phase of its standardization process.
VVC to be published as ITU H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3.
VVC's results come from the work of the Joint Video Expert Team (JVET), the latest team to lead the long-standing collaboration of the ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Expert Group and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 (Moving Image Expert Group, MPEG).
"Standardized video compression algorithms in collaboration with ITU, ISO and IEC continue to enable major advances in video quality," said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. "They are also critical to the industry's ability to meet the growing demand for video, the most bandwidth-intensive data source exchanged across global networks."
Video now accounts for about 80 percent of all internet traffic.
VVC will need only half the bit rate of its predecessor 'High Efficiency Video Encoding' to achieve the same level of video quality for high-resolution video content. It will reduce the amount of data needed to enable high-quality video for an unprecedented range of new and existing applications. VVC's compression performance will enable the delivery of UHD services at bit rates that are used today to transport high-definition (HD) services. Halving the bit rate required for a desired video quality will also ease the pressure on global networks, for example, by allowing twice as much video content to be stored on a server or provided by a streaming service.
VVC values encode efficiency and versatility in equal measure.
The new standard offers specialized tools for encoding screen content, computer-generated content from applications such as remote screen sharing, cloud-based collaboration, and cloud gaming.
Reference image sampling with VVC will support adaptive streaming solutions that adjust video streams to users' available bandwidth. VVC also provides standalone secondary images for applications such as tiled streaming of 360-degree video, allowing for a higher resolution for the portion of a 360-degree video to the eye.
VVC expands the range of technical options available to support video, but the standards that precede VVC will continue to enable video applications and services around the world.
