2024 Poised to be a Breakout Year for Versatile Video Coding -- Justin Ridge, MC-IF

BEAVERTON, Ore. - Feb. 1, 2024 - PRLog -- Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) will focus on parlaying an eventful 2023 -- which saw the publication of the first technical guidelines for Versatile Video Coding (VVC) -- into an even more impactful 2024, which will see the emergence of products and services based on the compression standard. So says Justin Ridge, president of MC-IF and principal engineer at Nokia's Multimedia Research and Standardization unit, in a podcast interview for journalists.

As demand for high-quality video continues to rise rapidly with the popularity of streaming services, social media video, and user-generated content, analysts at Verified Market Research project that the market for video encoding technology will reach $3.1 billion by the end of the decade, growing at a steady CAGR of 5.31%.

"The mission of MC-IF is to promote technologies developed by MPEG. Over the past few years, MC-IF has focused on VVC, a video codec that offers improved efficiency and applicability for a wide range of applications," says Ridge.

Adopting VVC has significant business and economic implications for many sectors of the economy that depend on high-quality video experiences. For instance, VVC introduces exciting opportunities to improve efficiency and performance while creating new revenue streams for broadcasters and over-the-top service providers.

"Beyond publishing guidelines, 2023 was also a watershed year because several standards bodies approved VVC -- including SBTVD, DVB, SCTE and ATSC (where it is in-progress). These approvals are important because it lays the foundation for practical deployments," says Ridge.

"It is designed to handle a wide range of applications and has attracted participants from various industries -- including digital entertainment, manufacturing, and logistics as well as a growing number of drone applications," he says.

As a result, we expect VVC to appear in a growing number of mobile devices and consumer electronics -- especially smart TVs -- as early as 2024. After that, we anticipate it to permeate into other areas, such as surveillance and security, in devices like drones and security cameras," says Ridge.

A Closer Look at VVC

VVC sets itself apart from legacy encoding technologies -- and even current encoding alternatives -- in several ways:

• Improved Coding Efficiency: VVC offers superior coding efficiency compared to previous generations of video codecs.
• Versatility: As the name suggests, VVC handles many applications. It incorporates various tools and features that make it suitable for different types of video content, such as HDR, 360-degree immersive video, and screen content.
• Open and Rigorous Development Process: VVC was developed through an open and rigorous process involving hundreds of technology experts. This ensures that VVC is reliable, robust, and suitable for large-scale deployments.
• Compatibility and Interoperability: VVC builds upon previous generations of video codecs, such as H.264 AVC and HEVC. As a result, it shares similar architecture and tools with earlier MPEG codecs, accelerating hardware implementation and mitigating complexity while still creating eye-popping performance gains. This allows for a smooth transition and integration into existing ecosystems and workflows. It also enables interoperability between different products and devices.