Video coding technologies – technologies which compress and then decompress video content – are an essential element of how we watch video, from quick social media posts to full-length movies. Two recent white papers from InterDigital – Media Over Wireless: Networks for Ubiquitous Video and Streaming Live Sports: Where Opportunity Meets Complexity – highlight the importance of advanced codecs in areas like watching content on a mobile device and enjoying live games featuring your favorite sports teams.
A video codec implements a specific video coding specification, such as AVC, HEVC, or VVC. The specification defines how video data is decompressed. The encoding process (how compression is performed) is not fully defined and is left open to implementation.
Each time a new video standard rolls out, it takes several years before it is widely deployed. The latest and most advanced standard — versatile video coding, or VVC — is no exception. While significant progress has been made since the VVC standard was finalized in 2020, other video coding specifications are currently in more widespread use throughout the world. VVC promises a number of intriguing benefits and is positioned to deliver added value to the video industry in the coming years, amid some signs that implementation is picking up.
VVC is clearly the most efficient video coding standard at the moment. Its predecessor, HEVC, still enjoys broad deployment, as does the even older standard, AVC. But VVC delivers roughly 2X the coding efficiency of HEVC and roughly quadruple that of AVC. Efficiency in coding isn’t just about improvement for improvement’s sake: new applications and use cases like immersive video and VR/AR deliver higher resolutions and more complex images, all of which equate to a profound need for the more efficient compression that VVC delivers.
In VR, we can see one place where the “versatile” part of the name of VVC applies. With its 360-degree viewing capability, a VR video is much larger than a two-dimensional image intended for a flat screen, meaning that advanced image compression is crucial for delivering immersive video widely across large-scale networks. But also, VVC is capable of handling VR-specific issues like the layered coding processes that allow for foveated rendering, where a VR image is rendered in full high-resolution only where the eye is focused. Earlier specifications were not fully designed in their core design for these new use cases.
Layered coding, sub-pictures and latency
VVC’s compression capabilities are the key to enabling many of these more advanced use cases for video technology. Latency is also improved through the use of VVC. To help lower latency, a technology called sub-pictures coding comes into play: this is a method for splitting hi-res pictures into sub-pictures, and encoding and decoding them independently. With immersive applications like VR and their large, hi-res images, this method is one way that latency is improved and a higher quality of experience is delivered to the user.
VVC was also designed to efficiently code HDR content, with native support for 10-bit video coding, HDR-related metadata signaling (in the shape of supplemental enhancement information messages and video usability information) coupled with a coding tool named Luma Mapping with Chroma Scaling (LMCS), which allows optimizing the dynamic of the signal for improved coding efficiency.
Devices and deployment
Key factors in the deployment of a new video coding standard are the availability of video encoders, system on chips (SoCs) for TV sets, and set-top boxes, combined with an interest from over-the-air and over-the-top (OTA/OTT) operators to launch services that require the new standard.
For VVC, the signs are promising, with a number of live and on-demand video encoder manufacturers such as Ateme, Harmonic, MainConcept, MediaKind, and SpinDigital (to name just a few) enabling VVC encoding and major SoC vendors such as MediaTek and RealTek enabling VVC decoding on TV sets and set-top boxes.
Additionally, Intel is the first chip manufacturer to integrate VVC hardware decoding into laptop computers with its Luna Lake mobile processors.
In Brazil, as part of the country’s move to TV 3.0, VVC was selected as the mandatory main video coding standard with field tests starting in 2025 ahead of the launch of full commercial services in early 2026. It seems safe to assume that TV set and set-top box manufacturers will bring TV 3.0 compliant products to the Brazilian market and that the acquired know-how in deploying VVC will be leveraged later on in other markets around the world. The first working prototype TV3.0/DTV+ set-top boxes were demonstrated at this year’s NAB and SET Expo trade shows.
For mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, an efficient VVC software decoder could power the mobile streaming market until VVC hardware decoders become available on mobile SoCs.
Adoption of VVC into global broadcasting standards
Many broadcasting standards bodies across the globe have approved and adopted application standards supporting VVC. Brazil is an interesting case, as approximately 75% of its 72.5 million households still use terrestrial over-the-air TV services, and due to its geographical size as the world’s fifth largest country, OTA may still dominate for many years. With TV 3.0 or DTV+, as it is also known, the South American nation made the decision to transition to a fully IP-based TV system, making it transparent if a service is delivered over-the-air or over-the-top to end consumers. Given that Brazil is the largest country in South America and a trend setter for the region, this move signals the vast potential for VVC in some of the most populous nations in the world. On August 27th, President Lula of Brazil signed a decree designating TV3.0/DTV+ as Brazil’s new TV standard.
In further evidence that VVC is gaining ground in the broadcast community, recently ATSC has included VVC in the latest version of the ATSC 3.0 video standard A/345. ATSC 3.0 is a key component of the physical and transport layer of the new DTV+ TV delivery system in Brazil, and is also used in the U.S., South Korea, and a number of other countries as an entire TV standard.
Among other standards groups, DVB was the first organization in 2023 to specify the usage of VVC in the widely known DVB specification for the use of video and audio coding in broadcast and broadband applications, which is published by ETSI. This enables the usage of VVC in all kinds of DVB networks, such as satellite, terrestrial, cable, IPTV, and OTT.
The adoption of VVC by these standards organizations is a critical step to supporting greater deployment — not just in TVs and broadcast equipment, but also in set-top boxes and broadband equipment; hardware that VVC is well-suited to support.
User-generated mobile video: huge growth = huge potential savings
VVC has applications that extend further. There is vast untapped potential in mobile video applications, with user-generated video gaining in popularity in many major markets such as China. VVC remains the most efficient video coding standard available for mobile video. Several large Chinese companies, such as Tencent and Alibaba (owners of WeChat and Youku, respectively), in addition to the Internet giant Bytedance (which owns the popular social media platform Douyin in China, as well as the global platform, TikTok), are actively investing in VVC for their video platforms. This includes the development and deployment of VVC-compliant software encoders, decoders, and media players, in addition to transcoding and media processing applications.
These platforms see VVC as a great solution to two growing problems: limits on bandwidth and storage. WeChat claims nearly 1.5 billion active users, TikTok has an estimated 1.6 billion, and Youku has 500 million, and these platforms have been steadily growing their user bases. With so many users collectively generating millions of short videos every day, VVC’s coding efficiency will help these providers realize tremendous savings on their bandwidth and storage costs.
The rest of the world lags behind China at the moment on this front, with only a handful of mobile video deployments for VVC currently outside of China. Nevertheless, if the widespread popularity and international appeal of mobile video-centric applications like WeChat and TikTok is any indication, this trend is well positioned to catch on quickly with more providers.
V is for versatile
All of this highlights what we mentioned above: VVC stands for “versatile video coding,” and the word versatile is central to the value of this standard. The same standard that can help a Brazilian TV broadcaster deliver better quality TV to more people can also help a large social media company in China deliver more short videos to its growing user base with less storage and bandwidth, and can help an immersive video provider deliver 360-degree video with minimal latency. This wasn’t an accident: VVC has been built to be versatile from the start. Working well in a variety of contexts is one of its strengths, and one of the reasons it is so well-positioned for future growth.