H.266/VVC

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The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute has announced the year-end release of a new video encoding standard which reduces the size of video files by 50%. H.266 / VVC (Versatile Video Coding) follows the current H.265 / HEVC compression standard and was developed by the Institute in collaboration with companies such as Sony, Apple, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Ericsson. At a time when 4K videos are becoming more common and as 8K emerges, this codec is very timely. Reducing the size of video files should also be useful for people with poor internet connectivity and / or weak devices. According to the Institute, H.266 offers “equal perceptual quality” to its predecessor for half the data. The first encoding / decoding software will be available this fall.

⇨ The Verge, Nick Statt, “Fraunhofer’s new H.266 codec promises to cut the cost of streaming 4K video in half.”