H.266 / VCC is now official, the new codec of the future that claims to reduce the size of videos by half
The history of codecs is the story of how, as video qualities superior to the previous generation arrived, better compression algorithms were needed so that the size of the files did not skyrocket. In this sense, H.264 or AVC, which is still the standard today, was a great advance over formats such as DivX and fu from the one used on Blu-Ray discs. After being the winner of High Definition, H.265 / HEVC succeeded it as the winner of Ultra High Definition (on UHD Blu-Ray and 4K video compression on smartphones.
Now, facing the 8K era, there is more competition than ever, but the recently introduced H.266 / VCC is again, for what it proposes, the one that seems to be a great candidate for winner of the decade again. After five years of development, it has been presented by the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, and they promise that it will reduce the size of the videos in half compared to what they occupied with H.265. This means that if a current 4K movie occupies 10 GB, with this it would occupy 5 GB without losing detail.
These are the novelties of H.266, which will have more competition than ever
H266
With H.266 they have achieved the 50% bitrate reduction they were looking for
In addition to reducing the size by half, which in the official statement also relates to a 50% bitrate drop to maintain the same quality, H.266 will have support for SD, HD, 4K and 8K resolutions. In this sense, H.266 will also support adaptive resolution changes.
Additionally, how could it be otherwise, it will also support 10-bit HDR video with wide color spectra, which can be expanded in the future. This is important, because HDR formats, now being HDR10 and Dolby Vision the most popular, will also evolve. There will be support for 360 video and video streaming, such as games or shared screens.
HDR on television: this is the revolution called to eclipse 4K / UHD
IN XATAKA
HDR on television: this is the revolution called to eclipse 4K / UHD
H.266 will, according to the statement, be supported by Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Sony. With Apple and Qualcomm it is guaranteed that its expansion at the level of hardware support will be extensive, since chips with the ability to encode and decode need to arrive, as happened with the previous ones. Apple, for example, added these options with the A10 chip, previously, in the A9, it could only decode.
The key to adopting H.266 will be whether its advantages are worth it over being a closed standard
Even so, beyond all these advantages, the big problem with H.266 is that it is not an open codec, but a closed codec, like its predecessors. That means that, to integrate it into hardware and use it in software, you have to pay licenses, unlike the other codec called to succeed in this decade, AV1. This, which also has the support of large companies in the sector, such as Apple, Amazon, ARM, Netflix, Google, Intel, Mozilla, etc.
Being open the great asset of AV1, it will be necessary to see if its saving of 25% on average compared to H.265 compensates for its free compared to 50% of H.266. Recent history tells us that proprietary formats win.
