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H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

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Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#11
post #5

that sounds great, but this is a press release with no real technical details. can anyone in the know add some context? for instance, whats the tradeoff? I assume more CPU? webrtc based video chats are all still using h264, did they not adopt 265 yet for technical or licensing reasons? what is the likelihood of broad browser support for h266 anytime soon?

> webrtc based video chats are all still using h264, did they not adopt 265 yet for technical or licensing reasons?

Is that with x265 built into both browsers ? I build it into mine but I don't think it is the default for ffmpeg.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#12

Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?

No, because the market is more than happy to pay a few cents or dollars per device to get better compression and lower transmission bandwidth. This observation has held true consistently in the 3 decades since compressed digital media was invented.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#13

Can anyone verify if this is a real number? It’s possible sometimes to make surprising claims (such as 50% lower size) by relying on unusual or unrealistic situations. I would rather if they use a standard set of test videos with different content and resolutions, and some objective measure of fidelity to the original, when quoting these percentages. But if the 50% number is real, then that is truly remarkable. I won…

If one trusted numbers like this, and followed a chain of en vogue codecs back through history, you'd expect that a modern codec would produce files sizes like 3% of MPEG-2 on the same input data. It's all spin.

I'm sure it does better, but I'm equally sure it'll turn out to be an incremental benefit in practice.

> I wonder how many more CPU instructions are required per second of decoded video compared to HEVC.

CPU cycles are cheap. The real cost is the addition of yet another ?!@$!!#@ video codec block on every consumer SoC shipped over the coming decade.

Opinionated bile: video encoding is a Solved Problem in the modern world, no matter how much the experts want it to be exciting. The low hanging fruit has been picked, and we should just pick something and move on. JPEG-2000 and WebP failed too, but at least there it was only some extra forgotten software. Continuing to bang on the video problem is wasting an absolutely obscene amount of silicon.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#14
It's interesting that they are able to continue improving video compression. You'd think that it would have all been figured out by now.

Is this continued improvement related to the improvement of technology? Or just coincidental?

Like, why couldn't have H.266 been invented 30 years ago? Is it because the computers back in the day wouldn't have been fast enough to realistically use it?

Do we have algorithms today that can compress way better but would be too slow to encode/decode?

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#15

Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?

Just found av1 is about 20 to 30% more efficient than h265. I guess there was no reason to use patented algs, but h265 is now significantly more efficient than av1. I would still take freedom over patented software

> Just found av1 is about 20 to 30% more efficient than h265

> […] but h265 is now significantly more efficient than av1.

What did you mean?

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#16

Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?

No, because the market is more than happy to pay a few cents or dollars per device to get better compression and lower transmission bandwidth. This observation has held true consistently in the 3 decades since compressed digital media was invented.

It's not that the market is happy to pay more, it's that there is essentially no choice.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#18

Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?

Honestly, the first step in this is getting the ffmpeg av1 library to a good usable place. It's currently so slow as to be near unviable. I'd happily switch when it becomes a usable option.

Re: H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

#20

It's interesting that they are able to continue improving video compression. You'd think that it would have all been figured out by now. Is this continued improvement related to the improvement of technology? Or just coincidental? Like, why couldn't have H.266 been invented 30 years ago? Is it because the computers back in the day wouldn't have been fast enough to realistically use it? Do we have algorithms today tha…

Compression is AI. It’s never going to be “all” figured out.
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