Christian Feldmann Archives – Page 2 of 2

Video: VVC, EVC, LCEVC, WTF? – An update on the next hot codecs from MPEG

Posted on 30th September 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The next-gen codecs are on their way: VVC, EVC, LCEVC but, given we’re still getting AV1 up and running, why do we need them and when will they be ready?

MPEG are working hard on 3 new video codecs, one in conjunction with the ITU, so Christian Feldmann from Bitmovin is here to explain what each does, the target market, whether it will cost money and when the standard will be finalised.

VVC – Versatile Video Codec – is a fully featured video codec being worked on as a successor to H.265, indeed the ITU call it H.266. MPEG call it MPEG-I Part 3. Christian explains the ways this codec is outperforming its peers including a flexible block partitioning system, motion prediction which can overlap neighbouring macroblocks and triangle prediction to name but three.

EVC is the Essential Video Codec which, intriguingly, offers a baseline which is free to use and a main profile which requires licences. The thinking here is that if you have licensing issues, you have the option of just turning off that feature which could five you extra leverage in patent discussions.

Finally, LCEVC – the Low Complexity Essential Video Codec allows for enhancement layers to be added on top of existing bitstreams. This can allow UHD to be used where only HD was possible before due to being able to share decoding between the ASIC and CPU, for example.

These all have different use cases which Christian explains well, plus he brings some test results along showing the percentage improvement over today’s HEVC encoding.

Watch now!
Speaker

Christian Feldmann
Codec Engineer,
Bitmovin

Video: AV1/VVC Update

Posted on 22nd May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

AV1 and VVC are both new codecs on the scene. Codecs touch our lives every day both at work and at home. They are the only way that anyone receives audio and video online and television. So all together they’re pretty important and finding better ones generates a lot of opinion.

So what are AV1 and VVC? VVC is one of the newest codecs on the block and is undergoing standardisation in MPEG. VVC builds on the technologies standardised by HEVC but adds many new coding tools. The standard is likely to enter draft phase before the end of 2019 resulting in it being officially standardised around a year later. For more info on VVC, check out Bitmovin’s VVC intro from Demuxed

AV1 is a new but increasingly known codec, famous for being royalty free and backed by Netflix, Apple and many other big hyper scale players. There have been reports that though there is no royalty levied on it, patent holders have still approached big manufacturers to discuss financial reimbursement so its ‘free’ status is a matter of debate. Whilst there is a patent defence programme, it is not known if it’s sufficient to insulate larger players. Much further on than VVC, AV1 has already had a code freeze and companies such as Bitmovin have been working hard to reduce the encode times – widely known to be very long – and create live services.

Here, Christian Feldmann from Bitmovin gives us the latest status on AV1 and VVC. Christian discusses AV1’s tools before discussing VVC’s tools pointing out the similarities that exist. Whilst AV1 is being supported in well known browsers, VVC is at the beginning.

There’s a look at the licensing status of each codec before a look at EVC – which stands for Essential Video Coding. This has a royalty free baseline profile so is of interest to many. Christian shares results from a Technicolor experiment.

Speakers

Christian Feldmann
Codec Engineer,
Bitmovin

Video: Scalable Video Coding in HEVC & AV1

Posted on 22nd February 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

While it has never played a big role in practical applications, scalable video coding has been around since the times of MPEG 2, and might actually have some advantages over the multi-rate transmission often applied today. The purpose of scalable coding is to efficiently compress multiple different versions of the same video in one “scalable” bitstream. Actually this sounds like the perfect solution for VOD and streaming applications, but unfortunately it has some downsides and few vendors ever used it. In this talk, Chrstian will review the basic idea of scalable coding, how it is enabled in modern coding standards and the pros and cons of implementing the technology in streaming applications.

Speaker

Chrisitan Feldmann
Codec Engineer,
Bitmovin

Video: VVC – the Next-Next Gen Codec

Posted on 18th December 2018 by Russell Trafford-Jones

VVC is a new standard going through MPEG standardisation which is being increasingly discussed. Dubbed the next, next-gen Codec, it promises to deliver many improvements over current Codecs.

Christian Feldmann from Bitmovin takes us through what’s new to help understand where the Codec is in its development, who is involved and how it’s going to achieve its aims. Covering also licensing

There’s a lot of work to do, but anyone who has an interest in Codecs should take some time to understand the work which is going on.