Fraunhofer HHI - H.266/VVC

**Sportman** · 6th July 2020, 20:54

H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC):
"This new standard offers improved compression, which reduces data requirements by around 50% of the bit rate relative to the previous standard H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)"
https://newsletter.fraunhofer.de/-vi...t/V44RELLZBp/1

**SolidComp** · 6th July 2020, 21:22

I wonder how it compares to AV1.

**DZgas** · 7th July 2020, 17:17

Non-free codec.
But yes - "I wonder how it compares to AV1".

HEVC has just begun to be supported by almost everyone.
The future for AV1 which is free and supported by all large companies...But no sooner than ~2022 even with large companies support.
What will happen to VVC, Internet Still is AVC.

So most likely this codec for Everything except the Internet.

**moisesmcardona** · 8th July 2020, 18:01

Originally Posted by DZgas

Non-free codec.
But yes - "I wonder how it compares to AV1".

HEVC has just begun to be supported by almost everyone.
The future for AV1 which is free and supported by all large companies...But no sooner than ~2022 even with large companies support.
What will happen to VVC, Internet Still is AVC.

So most likely this codec for Everything except the Internet.

These stronger codecs will require newer hardware. HEVC is being supported because the hardware is ready for some time now, but these new codecs will require the ASIC chips to be updated to include them, so I imagine they will not be mainstream until Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc integrates them and the world have shifted to the new hardware.

Surprisingly, AV1 decoding works really well compared to when HEVC started. The guys who work with dav1d have done an excellent job. Encoding, however, is still slow in the current state until we start seeing broader hardware encoders. Not to mention there is still a lot of tuning going on on the encoders.

**zyzzle** · 9th July 2020, 05:12

I'm very leery of this new codec. There comes a point where too much data is thrown away. "50% less bitrate for comparable quality". I don't believe it. You're in the lossy domain. The extra 50% reduction in bitrate over h.265 -- and probably ~75% reduction over h.264 codecs means extreme processor power is required, with very high heat and much greater energy cost to support the h.266 VVC codec.

Even h.265 requires very high processor loads. I do not want to "throw away 50%" more bitrate. I'd rather increase bitrate by 100% to achieve much higher quality (less lossiness).

**zubzer0** · 9th July 2020, 15:22

If compression touches the category of "visual lossless"* live video (fine detail, mosquit-noise, barely noticeable textures on flat surfaces), then HEVC (represented by x265) should disable some of its innovations in the form of SAO and use veryslow-placebo settings, so as not to fall into the mud face x264 and be on a par with it.
I wonder how h266 will be in this regard. Since it is based on HEVC, will it inherit this as well?

* example: x264 crf 16-18 or JPEG ~Q90

**Jyrki Alakuijala** · 9th July 2020, 15:38

Originally Posted by zubzer0

"visual lossless"

Visually lossless can mean very different things at 720p, 1080p, 4k, and 8k

**zubzer0** · 9th July 2020, 15:47

Jyrki Alakuijala This means comparing with the original in stop-frame, and not seeing differences without using a magnifying glass or mathematical analysis (butteraugli). This applies to any format.
this is why "jpeg" is still popular (fast and acceptable in comparison with modern analogues - for a very long time with minimal results, in "visual lossless") and if you compress it (example) in "lepton-fast", then it becomes a leader at all, fast-quality-minimal size ...

**Jyrki Alakuijala** · 9th July 2020, 17:06

Originally Posted by zubzer0

this is why "jpeg" is still popular (fast and acceptable in comparison with modern analogues - for a very long time with minimal results, in "visual lossless") and if you compress it (example) in "lepton-fast", then it becomes a leader at all, fast-quality-minimal size ...

JPEG XL is taking the crown on visually lossless. According to our analysis with human viewers, we get a 50 % improvement in visually lossless and a lower standard deviation in bitrates than what is necessary for traditional JPEG.

See figure 4 in https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/c...237.full?SSO=1

**zubzer0** · 9th July 2020, 18:11

Jyrki Alakuijala
there’s another very interesting and possibly promising version - HIGIC: High-Fidelity Generative Image Compression

https://hific.github.io/
We extensively study how to combine Generative Adversarial Networks and learned compression to obtain a state-of-the-art generative lossy compression system. In particular, we investigate normalization layers, generator and discriminator architectures, training strategies, as well as perceptual losses. In contrast to previous work, i) we obtain visually pleasing reconstructions that are perceptually similar to the input, ii) we operate in a broad range of bitrates, and iii) our approach can be applied to high-resolution images. We bridge the gap between rate-distortion-perception theory and practice by evaluating our approach both quantitatively with various perceptual metrics and a user study. The study shows that our method is preferred to previous approaches even if they use more than 2x the bitrate.

"NextGen" image comperrsion? (maybe in future video?). Although, maybe someone will do a neural network to restore JPEG

joke... or... "old man" will live forever(!) constantly adding new (re)compression / (re)processing / (re)restoration methods to it

**Jarek** · 12th July 2020, 12:28

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding

To reduce the risk of the problems seen when licensing HEVC implementations, for VVC a new group called the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) was founded.^[9]^[10]However, MC-IF has no official power over the standardization process, which is still based on pure technical merit.^[11]

With 4 companies vying to be the patent pool administrator for VVC, the same problems that plagued AVC ^[12] and HEVC ^[13] licensing seem to be repeating themselves again.

Created new group to reduce licensing problems ... so now there are 4 companies fighting for licenses on one codec - brilliant!

ps. While they say it is completed, I see the ISO standard (ISO/IEC DIS 23090-3) is "under development" in the Enquiry stage (between Committee and Approval): https://www.iso.org/standard/73022.html

**paleski** · 12th July 2020, 13:23

Originally Posted by Sportman

H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC):
... reduces data requirements by around 50% ...

Apparently 50% reduction is rather optimistic (marketing) statement, maybe can be reached only in some selected cases with subjectively perceived quality.
30%-40% reduction sounds more realistic, at least for the first waves of encoders.
Earlier this year bitmovin.com posted an article mentioning VVC test results compared to HEVC: similar PSNR values were achieved while reducing the required bandwidth by roughly 35%.

**Jarek** · 12th July 2020, 13:38

Here is some March 2020 benchmark paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.10282
Claim ~25-30% coding gain from HEVC (5-10% for AV1) ... in a bit more than half of complexity of AV1 ...
Looks good if fair ... but with even greater licensing issues than nearly unused HEVC.

**SolidComp** · 12th July 2020, 19:01

How did they beat AV1 so handily? I'm interested in the social science and cognitive science of both software development and domain-specific areas like video compression technology and theory.

How do you think they beat AV1? Who was responsible? Was it likely to be a single person driving the technological advances, a small team, or a large team?

Did they have to spend a lot of money developing VVC, you think? Is it the kind of thing where they'd have to recruit brilliant software engineers and video compression experts and pay them huge salaries and bonuses? I mean, there's no equity opportunity in working for some industry forum or coalition, no stock options and so forth. It's not like working for a Silicon Valley company. I wonder how the talent acquisition works. And the management and direction.

**SolidComp** · 12th July 2020, 19:09

Jarek, HEVC isn't unused. It's widely used. It's the format used for Ultra HD Blu-ray, which is awesome. It's also used in streaming 4K content on a lot of platforms, and is supported by most 4K TVs and streaming devices.

HEVC is much better than VP9, for reasons I don't understand. So it won this round.

It's also not clear that VVC will have the same licensing issues that HEVC had. The Wikipedia article isn't written in an encyclopedic tone, and there's no explanation behind the opinions expressed by whoever wrote that part.

**Jarek** · 12th July 2020, 22:14

Oh, indeed - I got that feeling from checking a few years ago, but I see it has improved ~2018.

ps. Just noticed that there is also EVC/MPEG-5 coming this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Video_Coding

**DZgas** · 12th July 2020, 22:21

VVC has patents - well, use AV1!

AVC / HEVC and most likely VVC - have very complicated coding algorithms and their ~extremely complex settings.
For easy be Presets that are the settings for hard settings. Movie or animation presets.

VP9 had just one button - to encode quickly, slowly, very slowly. It's all.

AV1 is same, variant encoding speed. I think developers from all companies selected the most multi-complex algorithms for all cases, so that encoding algorithms work equally well in every situation

I think that’s why VVC will have a microscopic advantage for Specifically Targeted Products.

**SolidComp** · 13th July 2020, 01:39

Being "free" or not doesn't matter much for a lot of use cases and industries. Some people have an ideological obsession with "free" software for some reason, as opposed to free furniture or accounting services, etc. Lots of industries will pay for a good video compression codec, if it's only a dollar or two per unit. All the TV and AV companies pay, and AVC and HEVC have been hugely successful.

It's mostly just browser makers who don't want to pay, so AV1 seems focused on the web.

**DZgas** · 13th July 2020, 11:54

Originally Posted by SolidComp

It's mostly just browser makers who don't want to pay, so AV1 seems focused on the web.

Hahaha, rude.

**spaceship9876** · 13th July 2020, 18:33

Originally Posted by Jarek

Oh, indeed - I got that feeling from checking a few years ago, but I see it has improved ~2018.

ps. Just noticed that there is also EVC/MPEG-5 coming this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Video_Coding

EVC was ratified ~3 months ago. They haven't released an encoder or decoder to the public yet though. They also haven't announced licensing costs or terms for the main profile either. That codec may have been created not for mass adoption but to pressure the companies involved in VVC to use sensible licensing costs and terms.

**SolidComp** · 13th July 2020, 22:25

Originally Posted by DZgas

Hahaha, rude.

These are companies involved? I don't see any TV makers or AV equipment makers. We'll see how it goes.

**DZgas** · 13th July 2020, 23:54

Originally Posted by SolidComp

These are companies involved? I don't see any TV makers or AV equipment makers. We'll see how it goes.

All these companies and services are involved. AV1 has too much support.

**Jarek** · 14th July 2020, 12:00

There are three - from https://www.ibc.org/trends/2020-crun...s/5569.article

Essential Video Coding – licence friendly baseline
EVC is intended to be an alternative to coding standards such as HEVC, AV1 or VVC and expressly designed to be royalty free in its basic implementation. It was initiated by MPEG as a countermeasure to the opaque licencing costs of HEVC by being offered in two profiles.
(...)
Low Complexity Video Coding – codec agnostic
Despite being part of the same MPEG 5 family there is no connection between EVC and LCEVC. It’s a fundamentally different approach to EVC in which the solution relies on taking an existing codec available in hardware – which could be AVC, HEVC or, in future, VVC - and adds a software layer on top responsible for improving the performance of the hardware encoder.
(...)
Versatile Video Codec on track
VVC is on track to be finalised as an international standard by the end of 2020. The next-generation (after HEVC) standards-based codec developed jointly by MPEG and the ITU targets 30% bitrate reduction over HEVC at the same perpetual quality. Trials, including by BBC R&D, confirm this. VVC capabilities are expected to support immersive content, resolutions from 4K to 16K and 360° videos particularly in complement to 5G networks.
(...)
AV1 – not so royalty free?

**choochootrain** · 14th July 2020, 17:12

Golem took a quick look at x264/x265/av1/vvc at default settings for 4K content:

https://www.golem.de/news/h-266-alia...07-149618.html

The original stills can be obtained from their gallery.

Code:

SSIM:

(original.png)  1
vvc_3mbit.png   0.832388
av1_3mbit.png   0.835461
x265_3mbit.png  0.802672
x264_3mbit.png  0.746433
-------------------------------------------
(original.png)  1
vvc_12mbit.png  0.85819
av1_12mbit.png  0.853742
x265_12mbit.png 0.848555
x264_12mbit.png 0.832085


DSSIM:

(original.png)  0
vvc_3mbit.png   0.0838061
av1_3mbit.png   0.0822697
x265_3mbit.png  0.098664
x264_3mbit.png  0.126783
-------------------------------------------
(original.png)  0
vvc_12mbit.png  0.0709049
av1_12mbit.png  0.0731289
x265_12mbit.png 0.0757223
x264_12mbit.png 0.0839575


PSNR:

(original.png)  inf
vvc_3mbit.png   32.1021
av1_3mbit.png   32.3837
x265_3mbit.png  29.7331
x264_3mbit.png  25.0805
-------------------------------------------
(original.png)  inf
vvc_12mbit.png  35.1929
av1_12mbit.png  34.8772
x265_12mbit.png 34.5414
x264_12mbit.png 32.7967

**Jyrki Alakuijala** · 15th July 2020, 04:11

Originally Posted by choochootrain

Links to originals:

https://scr3.golem.de/...

These examples don't look relevant or correct in the light of what is already possible. I'd be more interesting in new technology that makes images look crispy and natural. The cheapest unlimited internet connection (based on 4G) that I can buy in my area runs at 10-30 mbps and is already able to deliver a decent YouTube or Netflix experience running on VP9, even two streams at once.

**Lucas** · 15th July 2020, 21:19

Originally Posted by Jyrki Alakuijala

These examples don't look relevant or correct in the light of what is already possible. I'd be more interesting in new technology that makes images look crispy and natural. The cheapest unlimited internet connection (based on 4G) that I can buy in my area runs at 10-30 mbps and is already able to deliver a decent YouTube or Netflix experience running on VP9, even two streams at once.

I think that's missing the point, this new technology is about reducing storage and transmission costs so more people can stream on existing infrastructure. And when new infrastructure comes along the codec will still be capable of delivering at higher resolutions until even 16K falls into obsolescence. So this format will stick around for quite a long time.

In the grand scheme of things it's not about weather the format is right for you, it's about streaming/downloading in a way which benefits everybody: from the data-centers hosting the video to the people receiving it.

Lower bandwidth costs is always beneficial. You should know that

.

**Jyrki Alakuijala** · 16th July 2020, 10:05

It can depend on if humans are more or less valuable than computers.

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