Versatile Video Coding (VVC) / H.266: HEVC successor

[juliobbv]

You mean people at Doom9 "hates" AV1?

Not hate, but there seems to be an overall disinterest in AV1 relative to MPEG codecs at Doom9. If you look at thread count, "VP9 and AV1" have only 61 threads, compared to 776 for HEVC and 6608 for AVC. AVC isn't 100 times older than AV1, so codec age cannot account for such difference.

The compression-related Discord servers and Reddit feel much more "alive" in comparison. So it's maybe a generational difference?

[ksec]

Not hate, but there seems to be an overall disinterest in AV1 relative to MPEG codecs at Doom9. If you look at thread count, "VP9 and AV1" have only 61 threads, compared to 776 for HEVC and 6608 for AVC. AVC isn't 100 times older than AV1, so codec age cannot account for such difference.

The compression-related Discord servers and Reddit feel much more "alive" in comparison. So it's maybe a generational difference?

Because the newer generation believed that AV1 is patent free. Which 99% of AV1 supporter including their PR were bragging about. They attacked the patent pool as if AOM dont have a patent pool. They only stopped doing that around 2019 when I have to defend the correct usage of patent free every single time, which is what MPEG2 is right now. They want to stand on moral high ground which is what most of the newer generation think is right without considering quality and other metrics. And the whole AV1 is slightly superior to HEVC and moving the goal post to only 10% or about the same as VVC measurement during different stage of encoder maturity.

They also said AV2 will launch in 2020, and AV3 in 2022 or 2023. We are very close to 2026 now. But how many of those supporters said at the time because it is Google they could throw billions at it and do the impossible. What about hardware AV1 decoder? And then what about AV1 actual quality rather than constantly measuring against VMAF?

And how many times do I have to point out those flaws. How many times have i said Google wanted it because of control. Some people only woke up to it when JPEG XL happened. Google single handedly blocked JPEGXL to be included in Interop 2025. Despite Microsoft and Apple support.

I dont doubt MPEG, H.264/H.265/H.266 have its flaws. Patents sucks. But people on DOOM9 long enough went through Divx, Xvid, Windows Media, RMVB, x264, x265. We all knew how much INSANE hard work it is. Spending years if not decades doing quality encoding comparison as a a professional AND Hobby! There are certain marketing lies from AOM camp Doom 9 people see through. And people here cares about actual picture quality Damn it! That is why we are on Doom9. Because we were such a brunch of fools who cares about picture quality enough to spend that much time on it.

If there is a generational difference, then yes the older bunch want something great regardless of most of its surroundings things. Newer generational want something "right" and cheap, quality not being a top priority.


And I believe there are enough people here including myself really want AOM to learn from their mistakes and make AV2 great. But frankly speaking I dont see it happening, they are still focusing on 1 Mbps washed out content.

I am now also at the point happy to simply just use H264. Especially spending more bitrate just to get higher quality. May be AI encoder could further push the codec forward. Bandwidth cost is *still* dropping fast after 3 decades of cost reduction thanks to AI investment and optical technology. As I have said before it is actually faster to have the whole world rolled out 5G or 5G-Advance than a codec going mainstream. Because the cost calculation is constantly changing, going another codec just to save ~40% transfer cost from HEVC is no longer attractive. And ~65% reduction in transfer cost from VVC also doesn't attract enough usage. My guess is that VVC+LCEVC might go mainstream simply because of TV usage. It should also hit close to 75% reduction compared to H.264. Time will tell and depending on patent pool. But Geopolitics suggest may be soon there will be enough countries including Brazil to say no to these patents.

[juliobbv]

Hi ksec,

There's a lot to unpack from your reply. I'm detecting it was written with a very emotional state of mind, and I suspect that this let out some inaccuracies and mistakes that otherwise would've been caught when proof-reading the reply before sending. Maybe it'd be better if you take some time to recompose and reply again later?

[Z2697]

Well I guess some Doom9 user do "hate" AV1.
Including me :devil: (just kidding)
I appreciate the capability of it, but I also don't want to join the hype (if there is one).

And the forum threads... you know, the fact is we don't have any handy encoder from VP9/AV1 until recently, the SVT-AV1.
Even SVT-AV1 is... let's say for example how were they think it's a good idea to remove adaptive keyframe insertion on scene change???

[GeoffreyA]

Not hate, but there seems to be an overall disinterest in AV1 relative to MPEG codecs at Doom9. If you look at thread count, "VP9 and AV1" have only 61 threads, compared to 776 for HEVC and 6608 for AVC. AVC isn't 100 times older than AV1, so codec age cannot account for such difference.

The compression-related Discord servers and Reddit feel much more "alive" in comparison. So it's maybe a generational difference?

In my opinion, Julio, it's because AV1 ended up being used a lot in the anime-encoding community, excelling there, and they tend to use Discord and Reddit today. In an earlier era, the anime community developed key tools on Doom9. If more of today's enthusiasts came here, they would be welcome, appreciated, and it would be a boon to the site.

With mainline libaom, live-action details were ill preserved, leading to a decline, I think, in live-action encoding after the early Scene releases. There was disappointment in many, much like what we're seeing with VVC. But credit must be given to the SVT-AV1-PSY releases that have made considerable strides closing the detail gap. The last time such passion was seen was x264 in the DarkShikari days.

Intrinsically, the problem doesn't lie with AV1, but the diminishing returns across all codecs, especially in transparent quality, after H.264. At least, that's my view.

[rwill]

But credit must be given to the SVT-AV1-PSY releases that have made considerable strides closing the detail gap. The last time such passion was seen was x264 in the DarkShikari days.

Then you will be most thrilled to hear that the Psy-Rd source code in SVT-AV1-PSY is exactly the same as the one created with passion in the DarkShikari x264 days. And there are even several Donate buttons scattered around on SVT-AV1-PSY developer pages.

The passion lives on but now needs money too I guess.

[VoodooFX]

The compression-related Discord servers and Reddit feel much more "alive" in comparison. So it's maybe a generational difference?

It's pretty obvious - IQ difference, look at those AV1 reddit threads, maybe 90% of peeps there have no clue what they are writing about.

Let's to be clear about it, AV1 is not good, it's a flop. Go next.

[juliobbv]

Let's to be clear about it, AV1 is not good, it's a flop. Go next.

Let's agree to disagree here :)

[juliobbv]

In my opinion, Julio, it's because AV1 ended up being used a lot in the anime-encoding community, excelling there, and they tend to use Discord and Reddit today. In an earlier era, the anime community developed key tools on Doom9. If more of today's enthusiasts came here, they would be welcome, appreciated, and it would be a boon to the site.

With mainline libaom, live-action details were ill preserved, leading to a decline, I think, in live-action encoding after the early Scene releases. There was disappointment in many, much like what we're seeing with VVC. But credit must be given to the SVT-AV1-PSY releases that have made considerable strides closing the detail gap. The last time such passion was seen was x264 in the DarkShikari days.

Intrinsically, the problem doesn't lie with AV1, but the diminishing returns across all codecs, especially in transparent quality, after H.264. At least, that's my view.

This makes sense. The anime community has been influential at adopting new codec technologies, and there has been a considerable migration to Discord and Reddit over the past several years.

I hope VVC will get the same psychovisual love that its predecessors had. The potential is there for sure.

[Z2697]

Let's be neutral here.
AV1 (as a specification) does provide more potential than HEVC.
And it already has its success (you may say it's limited, well but still a success I'll call it).
The problem is the encoder, the implementation of the specification.
Like I said previously, we never had a handy VP(/AV)-series encoder until SVT-AV1 becomes mainstream, and it's still in its "early days" in the psychovisual optimization realm.

==========

And the donations? Come on, they are making contributions (btw only one of them have donation link now), is it not OK to ask for some donations?
Like, what's up with all those donation buttons in many popular open source softwares? Seriously? All those greedy people, can you believe that?

(I agree some of the "donations" can be sahdy, like some of the "AI video enhance GUIs", trash code, trash UI being written and the donation being like nag, or even paywalled)

[Z2697]

This makes sense. The anime community has been influential at adopting new codec technologies, and there has been a considerable migration to Discord and Reddit over the past several years.

I hope VVC will get the same psychovisual love that its predecessors had. The potential is there for sure.

(Today's hot take:)
Meanwhile in the anime community: writting a million python packages and what not for any bit of pipeline :devil:

[FranceBB]

In an earlier era, the anime community developed key tools on Doom9.

Yep. Most of us started as fansubber eons ago. Honestly, if it wasn't for subbing, I would have never learned how to use Aegisub, write LUA scripts, use Avisynth to deal with telecined contents, filter out issues, re-encode in xvid etc. Ironically, I would have probably never joined Crunchyroll, then Viewster, then Sky. It all started on Doom9 and from one passion, anime, I discovered another, encoding, and it led me to who I am today. It's funny to think how it all started: a bunch of people gathering on a forum subtitling and encoding anime in their free time for passion and wanting to do it better, tackling the problems we had at the time.

[kurkosdr]

Because the newer generation believed that AV1 is patent free. Which 99% of AV1 supporter including their PR were bragging about. They attacked the patent pool as if AOM dont have a patent pool.
There are some crucial differences though:

1) The ITU/ISO standards were designed to infringe on the patents of many companies as long as those companies promise to license them under FRAND (known as "option 2" in ISO lingo, with "option 1" being royalty-free), instead AV1 makes an effort to avoid patents not granted under a royalty-free license. Together with AOM's defensive termination clause (for AV1-essential patents owned by the companies behind AOM), it greatly reduces the number of companies asserting and the number of patents asserted.

2) VVC has double the number of patent pools compared to HEVC (20 vs 10 or so), and you have to negotiate a licence with all of them, because again, VVC was designed to infringe on those patents. I guess this is a new Moore's Law, with the number of patent pools doubling with every new ISO video standard. At some point, you have to make an honest assessment as a streamer whether the bitrate savings are worth the licensing costs, especially considering bandwidth is getting cheaper while the patent holders behind the ISO standards are getting greedier (again, VVC has double the patent pools of HEVC)

3) No successful patent assertions have happened against AV1, despite companies like Google using AV1 for video streaming and in products like the Google Pixel series. So, either those companies behind the Sisvel patent pool are perfectly happy with Google building products and services on top of what they claim is their treasured intellectual property, or they are full of BS.

[kurkosdr]

They only stopped doing that around 2019 when I have to defend the correct usage of patent free every single time, which is what MPEG2 is right now.
Patent-free can either mean "no assertions whatsoever", or "no successful assertions". Since it costs nothing to slap together a pdf with a list of patents and calling it your standard-essential patent pool, this tends to attract ambulance-chasers asserting but not litigating, so some of us prefer the second definition as a more reasonable definition.

This is different from the ISO standards, where as long as a patent pool contains a single patent from a single company that contributed technology to the ISO standard, you are probably infringing if you don't license (either via the patent pool or by negotiating with the company directly, but few are willing to do the latter).

Also, minor detail: MPEG 2 is still covered by patents in Malaysia, since some pre-TRIPS patents around muxing to mpg files still haven't expired:
https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/mpeg-2/mpeg-2-patent-list/
https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/mpeg-2-systems/patent-list

So, the first ISO standard to become fully patent-free will be MPEG 4 Part 2, when a Brazilian patent from Siemens will expire during summer 2026:
https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/mpeg-4-visual/mpeg-4-visual-patent-list/

Unless you meant patent-free in the US, in this case both MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 Part 2 meet this definition already.

[benwaggoner]

The compression-related Discord servers and Reddit feel much more "alive" in comparison. So it's maybe a generational difference?
For those of us who have advanced far on the young turk -> graybeard lifecycle, what are the good Discords and subreddits for compression? I don't Discord much, and haven't seen much activity on Reddit.

[benwaggoner]

Yep. Most of us started as fansubber eons ago. Honestly, if it wasn't for subbing, I would have never learned how to use Aegisub, write LUA scripts, use Avisynth to deal with telecined contents, filter out issues, re-encode in xvid etc. Ironically, I would have probably never joined Crunchyroll, then Viewster, then Sky. It all started on Doom9 and from one passion, anime, I discovered another, encoding, and it led me to who I am today. It's funny to think how it all started: a bunch of people gathering on a forum subtitling and encoding anime in their free time for passion and wanting to do it better, tackling the problems we had at the time.
Yeah, it has been a fascinating journey with this community. And tightly coupled with the miracle of x264, which introduced a dramatically new approach to codec development and optimization. As they said back in the day "all bugs are shallow with many eyeballs" - the community of enthusiasts all competing to make the best looking and smallest encodes quickest of everything drove so much development and new use cases. x264 got so many more tunings and testing than any prior encoder. And it wasn't just good at the standard SMPTE etc test clips, but things like content with film grain, motion graphics, video game footage, and cel animation. That kind of content, despite being a big part of real-world viewing, was dramatically underrepresented in the standard test libraries that encoders used to be turned to optimize PSNR for. And so the world got the best, fastest, most flexible video encoder in history. It was able to take great advantage of the new complex features of H.264 while still encoding as fast or faster as encoders for older, simpler codecs.

And a whole community of experts grew out of that who have gone on to careers in digital media in the last couple of decades.

x264's open source structure also lead to a lot of commercial companies funding people who used to be hobbyists to make further improvements. And eventually x265.

I'm old enough to have been a compression hobbyist and professional before x264 (I encoded my first file in 1989, and have been doing it for money since 1994). People who got into this with or after x264 probably don't know how much it changed everything.

And helped create this great community here.

And getting somewhat back to the original topic, AV1 and VP8/9 before it have suffered from the lack of the kind of community-tuned encoder like x264. HEVC was enough like AVC that x265 was able to start with x264 and the HEVC reference encoder and get something with reasonable performance and psychovisual optimization pretty quickly. And even though AV1 is open source,

VVC is even more based on HEVC than HEVC was based on AVC, so a x266 should be at least as straightforward as x265 was. However, HEVC and thus x265 had an immediate, essential market in getting HDR launched (this month is the 10th anniversary of launching HDR on Prime Video!). Companies needed to make HEVC on a deadline, and all those people who had worked deeply with x264 found the idea of something build on the same foundation with the same tuning parameters very appealing.

VVC having a more nightmarish patent licensing situation and no essential short term consumer feature it enables has prevented the same degree of frantiic development quickly iterating on real-world use cases that x265 got.

[juliobbv]

For those of us who have advanced far on the young turk -> graybeard lifecycle, what are the good Discords and subreddits for compression? I don't Discord much, and haven't seen much activity on Reddit.

These are the two Discord servers I personally pay most attention to right now.

AV1 for Dummies: https://discord.gg/uc744ZxMJP
JPEG XL: https://discord.gg/5AQnJYszV3

The AV1 anime Discord also has some great discussions and codec tests happening.
AV1 weeb edition: https://discord.gg/r8WSQVyd2K

The "AV1 Community" Discord had a recent admin change: https://discord.gg/8PEUhuqnqE

That's all for me. I'm not familiar with MPEG-oriented Discords, so other people may chime in with more details.

[hajj_3]

The BBC published a study in December 2024 comparing HEVC, VVC and AV1: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP419.pdf

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/video-compression-pq-metrics-vvc-av1

They found that AV1 provided 5% better compression when using HDR and WCG than HEVC. They found that VVC provided 48% better compression than HEVC. This study was from 2022 but for some reason seemed to only be released in 2024. They used SVT-AV1 v1.2.1 which was released in August 2022 and vvenc v1.5.0 which was released in July 2022.

[kurkosdr]

The BBC published a study in December 2024 comparing HEVC, VVC and AV1: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP419.pdf

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/video-compression-pq-metrics-vvc-av1

They found that AV1 provided 5% better compression when using HDR and WCG than HEVC. They found that VVC provided 48% better compression than HEVC. This study was from 2022 but for some reason seemed to only be released in 2024. They used SVT-AV1 v1.2.1 which was released in August 2022 and vvenc v1.5.0 which was released in July 2022.
So, in 2022, VVC was one generation ahead of HEVC while AV1 was on the same generation as HEVC?

Also very interested to see how things stand now.

[benwaggoner]

So, in 2022, VVC was one generation ahead of HEVC while AV1 was on the same generation as HEVC?
Encoder maturity matters a lot. and PQ requires different psychovisual tuning than SDR.

Also very interested to see how things stand now.
They've all improved in the last three years, but I would expect AV1 and VVC to have improved more than HEVC given their relative maturity. There's been some good recent work on AV1 HDR that is coming to SVT-AV1, but I don't know if it has made it to the main branch yet.

[birdie]

Some possible improvements for VVC licensing:

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Access-Advance-Reveals-Royalty-Rates-for-Video-Streaming-Services-170330.aspx

In January 2025, Access Advance announced the Video Distribution Patent Pool, initially announcing key incentives and a general framework. Following an interview with Access Advance CEO Peter Moller, I compiled the relevant Quick Facts that were posted at the time:

* The pool covers streaming content.
* Companies that would otherwise generate up to $25,000 in royalties for any six-month period will receive a royalty waiver in the form of a semi-annual credit of $25K, effectively excluding smaller entities like churches, schools, and small businesses.
* Covers HEVC, VP9, AV1, and VVC, with one charge for all content.
* Fees are tiered based on three key metrics: monthly active users, subscriber counts, and streaming revenue.
* Royalties start accruing on January 1, 2025.
* Licensees that joined by June 30, 2025, would have had previous royalties waived and a 25% discount through 2030.
* Access Advance expects most current patent owners from its existing pools to join, along with patent owners from other pools such as Sisvel, Via LA, and Avanci. Offsets will be provided for licensees that join two pools with duplicate coverage of the same patents.
* Access Advance acknowledges that some patent owners, like Nokia, will continue to license bilaterally and likely won’t join the VDP.

Looks like it's dawned on them that the current situation is untenable.

[hajj_3]

Some possible improvements for VVC licensing:

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Access-Advance-Reveals-Royalty-Rates-for-Video-Streaming-Services-170330.aspx



Looks like it's dawned on them that the current situation is untenable.

a new streaming licence in not a good thing!

[birdie]

Meanwhile the first (?) set top box with VVC decoding support has arrived:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3tZMtNd3ak

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009407366134.html

A bonus, an interview with Peter Moller, the CEO of Access Advance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCxnXfoO88I

Overall an ugly interview.

[kurkosdr]

Some possible improvements for VVC licensing:

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Access-Advance-Reveals-Royalty-Rates-for-Video-Streaming-Services-170330.aspx

In January 2025, Access Advance announced the Video Distribution Patent Pool, initially announcing key incentives and a general framework. Following an interview with Access Advance CEO Peter Moller, I compiled the relevant Quick Facts that were posted at the time:

* The pool covers streaming content.
* Companies that would otherwise generate up to $25,000 in royalties for any six-month period will receive a royalty waiver in the form of a semi-annual credit of $25K, effectively excluding smaller entities like churches, schools, and small businesses.
* Covers HEVC, VP9, AV1, and VVC, with one charge for all content.
* Fees are tiered based on three key metrics: monthly active users, subscriber counts, and streaming revenue.
* Royalties start accruing on January 1, 2025.
* Licensees that joined by June 30, 2025, would have had previous royalties waived and a 25% discount through 2030.
* Access Advance expects most current patent owners from its existing pools to join, along with patent owners from other pools such as Sisvel, Via LA, and Avanci. Offsets will be provided for licensees that join two pools with duplicate coverage of the same patents.
* Access Advance acknowledges that some patent owners, like Nokia, will continue to license bilaterally and likely won’t join the VDP.


Looks like it's dawned on them that the current situation is untenable.

Let's go through this one more time: The terms that MPEG LA and Access Advance offer are not the big problem, the big problem is those other patent pools and patent licensing entities you have to also negotiate terms with and pay royalties to, and last time I checked, there were 18 of them (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=2009192#post2009192).

Each of those 18 patent licensing entities has its own terms and royalties, and unless this problem is resolved, no meaningful improvement has happened.

Even with HEVC, the assumption that drove adoption was that the vast majority of the patents would be in the MPEG LA patent pool (save for 1-2 companies maybe), as was the case with H.264.

As the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The streaming market has collectively decided that the bitrate savings of VVC are outweighed by the costs of VVC (licensing costs plus the cost of encoding into yet another format) and won't commit to yet another ISO format. That's why VVC is almost nowhere in streaming.

Which is a good thing btw: seeing their brand-new standard not be adopted may light a fire under the buttocks of all those patent holders.

[oibaf]

There is an updated one:
https://accessadvance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2025Q2-VVC-Patent-Diagram-04-01-25-2048x1536.jpg

[modus-ms325c]

feels like i've already seen this before

[benwaggoner]

The streaming market has collectively decided that the bitrate savings of VVC are outweighed by the costs of VVC (licensing costs plus the cost of encoding into yet another format) and won't commit to yet another ISO format. That's why VVC is almost nowhere in streaming.
(as always, solely my own personal opinions here based on publicly available information)
It's not just that VVC is more expensive. It's that VVC's price is unknown. If we just knew it was going to be 3x H.264, we could run the ROI and see if it is a good deal. But with so many pools and patents, no one can give you even a ballpark figure that would pass legal review, and no CFO is going to bet the company not knowing how big an invoice is coming in a couple of years.

Patent litigation around AVC and HEVC IP not in any of the pools in the last year has also really emphasized the unknowability of the risk. Getting an injunction against using a key technology in a whole country or region is a huge randomizer, and therefor a risk no one wants to lean even more into.

Which is a good thing btw: seeing their brand-new standard not be adopted may light a fire under the buttocks of all those patent holders.
I'd hoped that HEVC was going to be the object lesson for them, which had poor and slow uptake in streaming. But the real money is in decoders, and I guess getting all of those into phones, computers, and living room devices offered a false sense of complacency. But content adoption drives device adoption, and HEVC's device adoption ran far ahead of its content adoption. So device vendors are waiting for the content companies to tell them they'll be using VVC before committing to including it.

[kurkosdr]

I'd hoped that HEVC was going to be the object lesson for them, which had poor and slow uptake in streaming. But the real money is in decoders, and I guess getting all of those into phones, computers, and living room devices offered a false sense of complacency. But content adoption drives device adoption, and HEVC's device adoption ran far ahead of its content adoption. So device vendors are waiting for the content companies to tell them they'll be using VVC before committing to including it.
HEVC still has a lot of adoption:

- It's the only format available if you want to stream UHD to early UHD Smart TVs (that don't do AV1), which means that premium streaming providers such as Netflix that charge extra for UHD have to to use HEVC (since they can't tell their customers that their perfectly good UHD TV won't do for Netflix UHD)

- In countries that have completed the transition to HEVC (for example Germany), using HEVC is legally mandatory for terrestrial FTA channels, and more countries will follow.

So, premium streaming services and broadcasters are stuck with HEVC regardless of the patent licensing issues.

So, yeah, the coup worked, but the patent holders can only do that once. Most streaming services won't touch VVC after their experience with HEVC's licensing situation, and broadcasters are stuck with HEVC for at least a decade from the date they transitioned to HEVC so they won't touch VVC for the foreseeable future either. I hope the patent holders are treasuring their treasured intellectual property (to use their words) even if almost nobody uses it.

[benwaggoner]

HEVC still has a lot of adoption:

- It's the only format available if you want to stream UHD to early UHD Smart TVs (that don't do AV1), which means that premium streaming providers such as Netflix that charge extra for UHD have to to use HEVC (since they can't tell their customers that their perfectly good UHD TV won't do for Netflix UHD)

- In countries that have completed the transition to HEVC (for example Germany), using HEVC is legally mandatory for terrestrial FTA channels, and more countries will follow.

So, premium streaming services and broadcasters are stuck with HEVC regardless of the patent licensing issues.

So, yeah, the coup worked, but the patent holders can only do that once. Most streaming services won't touch VVC after their experience with HEVC's licensing situation, and broadcasters are stuck with HEVC for at least a decade from the date they transitioned to HEVC so they won't touch VVC for the foreseeable future either. I hope the patent holders are treasuring their treasured intellectual property (to use their words) even if almost nobody uses it.
(again, so much my own personal opinions)
Yeah, a lot of companies were willing to take a riskier bet on HEVC because a) it was the only feasible way to do HDR and UHD, which were revenue-driving transformative features, and b) H.264 licensing was very straightforward and I think a lot of people assumed they'd get something ballpark similar.

VVC lacks an a) must have use case, and HEVC proved that b) was not a valid assumption, and thus VVC certainly can't be assumed to be.

VVC is technologically very appealing, but it isn't needed for anything and a good faith implementor can't trust they'll get a good faith retroactive licensing program. If licensors get together and provide an actual license that covers all of the core IP ala H.264, then VVC becomes an ROI decision. But the implement now, get a to-be-determined bill/lawsuit later model is a huge no-go that makes an ROI impossible to estimate.

And after all, any bad faith patent holders exactly would want the industry to adopt VVC in a big way to increase their retroactive payout. Boycotting VVC until there is a reasonable and comprehensive license is a powerful disincentive for bad faith participants to act that way, and is hopefully an incentive for them to engage in a good faith license to get some revenue for their IP. They are going to act to maximize profits, so the only "safe" way to proceed is to make sure that their profit maximization aligns with broader ecosystem health.

[MoSal]

* Covers HEVC, VP9, AV1, and VVC, with one charge for all content.


How considerate..

[RanmaCanada]

HEVC still has a lot of adoption:

- It's the only format available if you want to stream UHD to early UHD Smart TVs (that don't do AV1), which means that premium streaming providers such as Netflix that charge extra for UHD have to to use HEVC (since they can't tell their customers that their perfectly good UHD TV won't do for Netflix UHD)



Funny as Netflix did do that with a whole range of 4k Vizio TVs (https://support.vizio.com/s/article/Netflix-No-Longer-Working-on-Older-VIZIO-TV-and-Blu-Ray-players?language=en_US). It seems any 4k tv made before 2013 has had their support dropped.

Friend owns several of these that still work and refused to replace them just because Netflix didn't work. Was forced to buy Rokus to fix it.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Supporting devices like Smart TVs more than 10 years old is obscenely difficult. You have no idea how terrible the software and hardware is even on modern cost optimized garbage heaps like most people have. Buying a $30 Roku / FireTV is an unfortunate, but swallowable bitter pill. This is why I use Apple TVs on both my home TVs no questions. My long in the tooth LG B6 is still awesome today with one (with some notable limitations on audio sync with Dolby Vision and external audio... but I don't care in my bedroom where I use buit-in speakers).

Smart TVs are incredibly constrained, especially when manufacturers load them up with ads.

[kurkosdr]

Funny as Netflix did do that with a whole range of 4k Vizio TVs (https://support.vizio.com/s/article/Netflix-No-Longer-Working-on-Older-VIZIO-TV-and-Blu-Ray-players?language=en_US). It seems any 4k tv made before 2013 has had their support dropped.

Friend owns several of these that still work and refused to replace them just because Netflix didn't work. Was forced to buy Rokus to fix it.
Sure, but those are 2013 models, aka old enough. But good luck telling subscribers that their still-new 2020 4K OLED TV can't get Netflix UHD, especially considering Netflix charges extra for Netflix UHD. At some point, the cost of having all those subscribers downgrade to the lower Netflix HD tier outweighs any savings. Even today, some low-end 4K HDR TVs still on store shelves don't do AV1.

[benwaggoner]

Sure, but those are 2013 models, aka old enough. But good luck telling subscribers that their still-new 2020 4K OLED TV can't get Netflix UHD, especially considering Netflix charges extra for Netflix UHD. At some point, the cost of having all those subscribers downgrade to the lower Netflix HD tier outweighs any savings. Even today, some low-end 4K HDR TVs still on store shelves don't do AV1.
It's also worth pointing out that encoder maturity and performance are big factors. AV1 encoders aren't as refined as those for HEVC yet, and are quite a bit slower when run in modes that maximize a bitrate advantage. We've seen enormous improvement in the last couple of years, and it's not kind of a tossup for whether a full length movie in AV1 won't have some quality regressions against HEVC at a given bitrate. It can go years from an impressive demo encoding short selected content at a single bitrate to something that can reliably and efficiently encode full bitrate ladders of multi-hour long content.

This is just how codecs work; HEVC was a very unusual exception in that it was practically implementable at scale in less than five years after the standard was finished.

[ksec]

Patent-free can either mean "no assertions whatsoever", or "no successful assertions".

Patent Free means something very specific. The word you are looking for is patent unencumbered. Which AOM camp have since changed and are now using it.


Hi ksec,

There's a lot to unpack from your reply. I'm detecting it was written with a very emotional state of mind, and I suspect that this let out some inaccuracies and mistakes that otherwise would've been caught when proof-reading the reply before sending. Maybe it'd be better if you take some time to recompose and reply again later?

Point out the inaccuracies and mistakes and we can discuss.

[ksec]

Some possible improvements for VVC licensing:

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Access-Advance-Reveals-Royalty-Rates-for-Video-Streaming-Services-170330.aspx



Looks like it's dawned on them that the current situation is untenable.

We are not far off from freely using H.264.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F

[kurkosdr]

We are not far off from freely using H.264.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F
Depends on your definition of "far off", 2030 is pretty far off IMO.

[birdie]

Intel is the only consumer facing company that hasn't given up on the VVC codec.

They will support it in its upcoming Panther Lake/Xe3 architecture.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/intels-next-generation-panther-lake-laptop-chips-could-be-a-return-to-form/

[hajj_3]

https://accessadvance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025Q4-VVC-Patent-Diagram-10-01-25.jpg

The significant change is that Apple and Maxell have joined the Via-LA patent pool.

[kurkosdr]

Wow, only 18 patent-licensing entities to make license agreements with and pay royalties to, now VVC is ready to take on AV1 and the soon-to-be-released AV2! /s

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[soresu]

Wow, only 18 patent-licensing entities to make license agreements with and pay royalties to, now VVC is ready to take on AV1 and the soon-to-be-released AV2! /s

(sorry, couldn't resist)

No need to say sorry, it's a completely warranted perspective.

They literally created AOM with this stupid situation.

[birdie]

No need to say sorry, it's a completely warranted perspective.

They literally created AOM with this stupid situation.

They literally buried themselves. Only Intel so far has been brave enough to license this huge effing mess.

[GeoffreyA]

VVC has been one of the biggest disappointments in encoding history, and as kurkosdr observed, what in heaven's name is it going to do in the face of AV2? Nor does it help that x266 remains mythical.

[VoodooFX]

what in heaven's name is it going to do in the face of AV2?

Maybe nothing, if AV2 will be like AV1 ~worse than x265. :D

[benwaggoner]

Maybe nothing, if AV2 will be like AV1 ~worse than x265. :D
Oh, that's really not true anymore. In 2025 the best AV1 encoders can now outperform the best HEVC encoders by 20-30% with equivalent tuning effort. It took a long time to get there, but it happened. Yeah, x265 can outperform libaom in lots of scenarios still, but that's not where the eyeball-hours come from.

It would be faster for AV2 as it gets a head start from having good AV1 encoders; AV1 had no professional quality VP9 encoders to iterate from.

My extrapolation from way too many generations of new codecs is that AV2 should meaningfully outperform AV1 for real-word use circa 2018-2019. That includes workflow integration, performance optimization, psychovisual tuning, etcetera.

VVC was technically superior on multiple axes to AV1, but the licensing nightmare made that irrelevant. I expect H.267 will be technically superior to AV2. I also predict it won't matter unless H.267 patent licensing gets better than HEVC, let alone VVC. I don't think it is possible to make an advanced distribution codec ignoring IP concerns anymore. I don't think royalty-free is needed; something like a H.264 like license from a single licensing entity who publishes terms would work fine, even if it was 2-3x more expensive. It's the "I have no idea how much this could retroactively cost" factor that's a hard blocker.

[VoodooFX]

Oh, that's really not true anymore. In 2025 the best AV1 encoders can now outperform the best HEVC encoders by 20-30% with equivalent tuning effort.

I didn't observed such, tested in mid 2025 with svt-av1-psy.

[rwill]

I didn't observed such, tested in mid 2025 with svt-av1-psy.

AVT-AV1-PSY (which one of the forks anyway?) is hardly one of the best AV1 encoders... same with x265 and HEVC. Most hobbyists don't take that implementation vs. standard thing into account.

[cubicibo]

Oh, that's really not true anymore. In 2025 the best AV1 encoders can now outperform the best HEVC encoders by 20-30% with equivalent tuning effort.

Can't compare codecs without clear context (use-cases, constraints, setup, etc.). Did people forget about Dark Shikari blog post on that very subject?

[LigH]

"Dark Shikari" ... a name I didn't read in ages. But still remember.

[oibaf]

VVC (H.266) video codec effectively dead on arrival, posits analyst
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1764735539