Any news about a potential successor to VVC / H.266?

[kurkosdr]

I know it's a bit early to ask, but with Leonardo Chiariglione having announced the "death of MPEG", I thought there is no harm in asking:

Has anyone heard any news about a potential successor to VVC / H.266?

Now, don't get me wrong, VVC is pretty advanced and all, but it still can't compress a UHD stream to the bitrate of an FHD H.264 stream with the same quality, while at the same time terrestrial bands are shrinking worldwide. That's why I am wondering whether the 10-year cadence (a new format every 10 years or so) will be kept alive despite the recent restructuring of MPEG or VVC / H.266 will be the end of the line.

Also, I know AV1 exists and will likely keep evolving, but it's not an ISO or ETSI standard, and free-to-air and free-sat broadcasters can only use ISO and ETSI standards (and ATSC standards for the US). In other words, ISO standards are still important if free-to-air and free-sat are to keep up with internet distribution in terms of quality.

[nhw_pulsar]

There is currently MPEG VVC ECM: Enhanced Compression Model (beyond VVC) which presents some impressive improvement over VVC, something like 20-30% if I remember correctly.MPEG is also studying machine learning next-generation video coding tools, notably super-resolution and neural-network-based loop filters. For more info, details are available on their website at standard explorations.

A drawback is that it is really slower notably to decode...

Also the ultra-impressive ECM is however (as always) PSNR- and SSIM- driven, which don't correlate well with human visual system.For example, on the clic learned image compression challenge website, I have seen an image at high compression with BPG and ECM, and I visually preferred the BPG image... As also very quickly with VVC, I don't know if my VTM binaries are right (I also use the default command line and slowest preset), but I find that VVC lacks of neatness, with a comparison with my codec, I find that NHW has more neatness (but less precision), but visually I find that neatness is more pleasant than precision... Don't know if ECM will correct neatness? But of course this is my very personal opinion, for example the industry absolutely doesn't share it and completely sticks with PSNR, SSIM and precision...

Cheers,
Raphael

[Jamaika]

What are BPG photos and who uses them? After all we have the HEIF/AVIF standard.
The purchase of equipment is also very interesting nowadays. After the promotion, Orange offers smartphones for X EURO, but it can buy equipment for 75% cheaper on amazon through an intermediary who keeps 15% commission.
As for the vision of 8K LTM, LCEVC, EVC, AV2, JXS. They are paid and only on the SAT.

The Webb telescope has problems, and it is not known what the photos of the 16K universe will be in. A good topic for a clairvoyant.
https://www.v-nova.com/try-v-nova-vi...-technologies/
https://cloud.qencode.com/lcevc-video-codec
https://www.lcevc.org/how-lcevc-works/
https://www.mpeg.org/

[Blue_MiSfit]

LC-EVC is a big step forward for a lot of use cases, especially when paired with next gen formats like VVC and AV1.

It's not a slam dunk for every use case though

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

Just a quick correction, sorry for my misleading information, BPG is not better than VVC intra.On my image test sets, VVC VTM intra is a little visually better than BPG for me, but it seems rather slight (BPG -m 1 also takes 78ms to encode, whereas VTM intra takes 75seconds to encode...), I also don't test at extreme compression.But the difference really appears for video coding I think, because I don't test video sequences, but I have seen few comparisons between HEVC and VVC at the same bitrate, and VVC was then really visually better in the video case.

Cheers,
Raphael

[rwill]

MOM !

People are comparing shitty (reference) encoder implementations against each other again !!!

[ksec]

It is progressing at a surprisingly fast rate. ECM 4 + EE1.2 managed ~30% BD-Rate with 4K compared to VTM 11. ( VVC Reference Encoder, although VTM 16 do outperform VTM 11 by about ~10% so the actual difference isn't as big )

We should have some news about ECM 6 soon. We are not far off from the 40-50% BD Rate compared to VVC.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

I know it's a bit early to ask, but with Leonardo Chiariglione having announced the "death of MPEG", I thought there is no harm in asking...

Hmmm...

Leonardo Chiariglione's announcement was made over two years ago (Sat 06 Jun 2020) over on the MPEG Home Page when his chairmanship of the group came to an end after 32 years!

I suspect he was more than a little pissed off... Was he pushed out? Probably

[benwaggoner]

AV2 is also in development, and certainly will be available before ECM. It's too early to say if it'll be as good as VVC for real-world content, let alone better.

[ksec]

I would go as far as to say ECM is actually ahead of AV2 in terms of development. At this rate we could have next gen ( H.267? ) spec ready by 2025.

It will be interesting because ECM is looking like the first Video Codec which would requires dedicated Hardware Decoder to work. We are looking at ~5x the Decoding Complexity compared to VVC.

[FranceBB]

But most importantly... where the heck is x266?!
Honestly, is there any plan from Multicoreware to release what they have done and make it open source once and for all? 'cause honestly, I've been doing all my tests with Fraunhofer's VVEnc which is somewhat more usable than the VTM reference encoder, but still, I'd like to have x266 to play with and start the integration with our systems...

P.s looks like they're gonna be at this year's IBC, so maybe I can ask them in person https://multicorewareinc.com/ibc2022/

What do you say, Ben? Shall we get there together on behalf of Doom9 xD?

EDIT: Ok, I've actually booked with them on Monday, September 12. I'll ask about x266 and I'll come back here with some more info. Hopefully it's gonna be good news. Stay tuned.

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

terrestrial bands are shrinking worldwide. That's why I am wondering if the 10-year cadence (a new format every 10 years or so) will be kept alive despite the recent restructuring of MPEG or if VVC / H.266 will be the end of the line.

Don't worry about terrestrial, I'm sure that in 10 years time there are still gonna be channels in MPEG-2 720x576 yv12 25i TFF BT601 alive xD

[Blue_MiSfit]

Let us know what MCW says - I haven't spoken to them in quite a long time (since before Pradeep left).

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

What do you say, Ben? Shall we get there together on behalf of Doom9 xD?

Yeah. We should have a doom9 meetup even if there's a critical mass going.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

But most importantly... where the heck is x266?!
Honestly, is there any plan from Multicoreware to release what they have done and make it open source once and for all? 'cause honestly, I've been doing all my tests with Fraunhofer's VVEnc which is somewhat more usable than the VTM reference encoder, but still, I'd like to have x266 to play with and start the integration with our systems...

P.s looks like they're gonna be at this year's IBC, so maybe I can ask them in person https://multicorewareinc.com/ibc2022/

What do you say, Ben? Shall we get there together on behalf of Doom9 xD?

EDIT: Ok, I've actually booked with them on Monday, September 12. I'll ask about x266 and I'll come back here with some more info. Hopefully it's gonna be good news. Stay tuned.

To be honest, with the development of open-source encoders for ISO standards having slowed down to a standstill (for example: no high-quality AAC-LC encoder, or HE-AAC encoder, or MPEG-H 3D Audio encoder), I am glad Multicoreware has stepped up to create an open-source VVC encoder, so at least that thing is covered. It's the same deal with EVC, we had to wait for Samsung to donate an open-source encoder (xeve) to have one. So, let's give MultiCoreware some time, they have delivered well enough with x265 to deserve our trust IMO.

[FranceBB]

Absolutely, I totally trust them, but there are two things that worry me now and didn't worry me in 2013 in the x265 days:

- They don't have an account where they post regularly on Doom9 anymore (and they deleted the x265_Project account from which the devs used to post)
- Pradeep Ramachandran has left Multicoreware (June 2015 - May 2021) and he was the manager of the video-related development team who was responsible for x265 and I have no idea who picked up the task after him

which is why I'm going to meet with them and ask them how things are going.
Speaking of which, I'm gonna open a new topic on monday as I'd like to collect all the questions that the community might wanna ask them and report those to them so it would be as if you all came to their boot at IBC with me.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by Blue_MiSfit

LC-EVC is a big step forward for a lot of use cases, especially when paired with next gen formats like VVC and AV1.

It's not a slam dunk for every use case though

Is it any good when layered over HEVC? HEVC has emerged as the defacto format for UHD 4K video in terrestrial and satellite, so anything that could be done to reduce the bitrate without breaking compatibility is always welcome. With this arrangement, the current HEVC decoders could potentially decode a lower-bitrate HEVC stream while any newer receivers could also decode the LC-EVC enhancement to get the equivalent quality of a higher bitrate HEVC-only stream. Provided LC-EVC over HEVC is worthwhile, of course.

To be honest, I am a bit disappointed by the current state of UHD in broadcasting. We are taking state-of-the-art DVB-T2 muxes being able to broadcast a grand total of 3 channels. With VVC it would increase to a grand total of 5 (meanwhile with H.264 FHD you can fit 6). That's why I think that UHD on broadcasting won't be much of a success unless some further improvement is made on compression.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

To be honest, I am a bit disappointed by the current state of UHD in broadcasting. We are taking state-of-the-art DVB-T2 muxes being able to broadcast a grand total of 3 channels. With VVC it would increase to a grant total of 5 (meanwhile with H.264 FHD you can fit 6). That's why I think that UHD on broadcasting won't be much of a success unless some further improvement is made on compression.

iptv is becoming more popular so dvb-t2 will become less relevant. Plenty of bandwidth available with DVB-S2 and DVB-C.

[FranceBB]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

To be honest, I am a bit disappointed by the current state of UHD in broadcasting. We are taking state-of-the-art DVB-T2 muxes being able to broadcast a grand total of 3 channels. With VVC it would increase to a grant total of 5 (meanwhile with H.264 FHD you can fit 6). That's why I think that UHD on broadcasting won't be much of a success unless some further improvement is made on compression.

That's true for DTT, but don't think Satellite is any better 'cause HotBird is overcrowded and bandwidth is expensive af.

Originally Posted by hajj_3

iptv is becoming more popular so dvb-t2 will become less relevant. Plenty of bandwidth available with DVB-S2 and DVB-C.

Not really, it's becoming more popular in cities only.
If you think about rural communities, they can easily get a DTT feed or a Satellite feed, but they can't really watch the telly over the internet.
To make a quick example, during the 2nd heatwave in Italy I didn't wanna stay in Milan and sweat my balls off on a 104°F heatwave, so I went to a mountain village at 5000 feet which was far better with as little as 61°F. Thanks God they had a Satellite dish and I could watch the game quite happily in UHD at 25 Mbit/s H.265 HEVC 4:2:0 HLG HDR 10bit planar, 'cause otherwise I would have had to miss it (yes, miss it). Why? Well, 'cause even though the hotel had Wi-Fi, their Wi-Fi was hooked up to an ADSL modem 'cause nothing else was available or ever got to that village. Same goes for mobile connection which was limited to 3G only. Until internet is gonna be everywhere at decent speeds and with modern technologies, IPTV will never be a thing. If you use satellite, however, you have pretty much the same quality everywhere and it doesn't matter where people live, they almost certainly will be able to install a dish and watch their favorite programs at high quality. Internet is fine if you have things like OTT where you wanna watch a movie or a TV Series and it can load all the time you want as buffering doesn't matter, but if you have a live event like a Football game, then latency matters and in that case a satellite feed will always be the only option for lots of people, especially for those living in rural communities. Speaking of internet-only based providers, this is mainly the reason why companies like Netflix and Amazon who offer on demand movies and tv series are succeeding in Italy, but those who only offer Sports like DAZN are not (and never will without satellite).

p.s I also work for a company who airs via satellite, so I'm biased xD

[ksec]

ECM 4.0 Tagged, ECM 5.0 expected in October.

[ksec]

Originally Posted by ksec

ECM 4.0 Tagged, ECM 5.0 expected in October.

Now they tested ECM 6.0 vs VTM 11

The results of the two tests reveal congruent results for the performance of the ECM and the VTM. Both, the laboratory test conducted with naïve viewers and the on-site test with experts demonstrate a clear visual benefit of the ECM when compared to the VTM for a significant number of cases. For the laboratory results, reported BD rate savings indicate a benefit of about 38% for the UHD test sequences and about 32-33% for the HD test sequences on the given test set.

The 38% average was with 3 test doing 45% reduction and two test with 30% only.

Pretty damn impressive if you ask me. This is excluding the EE2 work using Neural Network. And they still have plans for ECM 7.