Page 95 - ITU Journal, ICT Discoveries, Volume 3, No. 1, June 2020 Special issue: The future of video and immersive media

ITU Journal: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 3(1), June 2020

THE VIDEO CODEC LANDSCAPE IN 2020
Michel Kerdranvat, Ya Chen, Rémi Jullian, Franck Galpin, Edouard François
InterDigital R&D, Rennes, France

Abstract – Video compression is a key technology for new immersive media experiences, as the percentage
of video data in global Internet traffic (80% in 2019 according to the 2018 Cisco Visual Networking Index
report) is steadily increasing. The requirement for higher video compression efficiency is crucial in this
context. For several years intense activity has been observed in standards organizations such as ITU-T VCEG
and ISO/IEC MPEG developing Versatile Video Coding (VVC) and Essential Video Coding (EVC), but also in
the ICT industry with AV1. This paper provides an analysis of the coding tools of VVC and EVC, stable since
January 2020, and of AV1 stable since 2018. The quality and benefits of each solution are discussed from an
analysis of their respective coding tools, measured compression efficiency, complexity, and market
deployment perspectives. This analysis places VVC ahead of its competitors. As a matter of fact, VVC has been
designed by the largest community of video compression experts, that is JVET (Joint Video Experts Team
between ITU-T and ISO/IEC). It has been built on the basis of High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265/HEVC)
and Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC) also developed by joint teams, respectively JCT-VC and JVT, and
issued in 2013 and 2003 respectively.
Keywords – AV1, EVC, HEVC, Video Coding, VVC.

1. INTRODUCTION unlike HEVC, some industry players are anticipating
the publication of suitable licensing terms for a
The landscape of video coding is evolving rapidly. successful deployment. Besides this effort, at the
New solutions are developed in the standards initiative of a few companies, a parallel project for
organizations ISO/IEC MPEG (Motion Picture another video coding standard has been worked out
Experts Group) and ITU-T VCEG (Video Coding in MPEG with the same schedule. The name of this
Experts Group), but also in the industry consortium new coding standard is Essential Video Coding (EVC)
Alliance for Open Media (AOM) founded in 2015. [5], with the objective of being royalty-free for the
Even though Advanced Video Coding (AVC) [1], baseline profile and royalty-bearing for the main
which was completed in 2003, is the dominant profile with expected timely publication of the
standard nowadays for video distribution, new licensing terms. The landscape is completed by
services (such as UltraHD 4K format) are deploying AOM which released the initial version of AV1 [6] in
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) [2] designed 2018. AV1 was developed with the goal of being
jointly by MPEG and VCEG, and issued in 2013. This royalty-free, and hence its development process
move to HEVC is justified by a compression factor of took into account not only technical factors, but also
around 2 with regards to AVC leading to half the patent rights factors. However, licensing terms of
transmission or storage bit rate for the same video coding standards have always been defined
subjective quality [3]. To face the emergence of by patents holders once their technical
increasing picture resolution (e.g., UltraHD 8K specifications have been released.
format) and pixel definition (bit depth, color gamut,
dynamic range), higher frame rates, and new uses This paper presents results of a comparison
(Video on mobile, Virtual Reality with 360° video...) between the three solutions VVC, EVC and AV1 in
impacting production, network distribution, and terms of compression efficiency, complexity and
receivers (TVs, mobiles…), MPEG and VCEG have features relative to HEVC. Careful attention was
again joined their resources in 2015 to start an paid to an as-fair-as-possible comparison between
exploratory phase, resulting in 2018 in the the encoding softwares, considering that it is not
launching of a joint team, Joint Video Experts Team possible to get perfectly aligned comparisons, as the
(JVET), tasked with designing a new video coding encoder algorithms may significantly differ. The
standard, Versatile Video Coding (VVC), targeting a first section presents an overview of the underlying
50% compression gain over HEVC. The main coding tools from respective standards. The
specification of VVC [4] has been stable since following sections describe the test conditions and
January 2020 and completion is foreseen for associated configuration parameters used in the
July 2020. As with previous ITU-T and comparisons.
ISO/IEC standards, VVC will be royalty-bearing, but

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