JVET-AF0021 Deployment status of the VVC standard [G. J. Sullivan (SC 29 chair & VCEG rapporteur)]

This contribution contains a survey of deployed products and services, publicly available software source code, related tools, and formal specifications supporting the VVC standard (Rec. ITU-T H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3).

Revision marking is included to show changes relative to JVET-AD0021-v7 of April 2023.

1. Version 1.9.0 rc2 of Fraunhofer HHI’s VVenC and version 2.1.0 of VVdeC were released in July 2023. The main changes for VVenC v1.9.0 rc2 since version 1.8.0 included rate capping for rate control encoding (capping at minimum 1.5x target rate), first pass speedups by the means of temporal and spatial subsampling (the latter feature being experimental), and initial experimental support for frames-in-flight parallelism. The two main changes for VVdec since version 1.6.1 were initial implementation of error resilience and initial native support for ARMv8 architecture.
2. NHK released software providing multilayer support on top of Fraunhofer HHI’s VVenC v1.6.1 encoder to GitHub in July 2023.
3. Electronic Team, Inc. released a version 8.16 of its video player for macOS called the Elmedia Player in July 2023. It was based on the VVdeC software and could achieve 8K video playback.
4. Updated information about the Ali266 encoder by Alibaba was reported in October 2023. Compared to x265 (v3.5), the updated Ali266 encoder reportedly provided over 60% bit rate savings relative to x265’s “veryslow” preset at similar encoding speed for non-real-time applications, and over 40% bit rate savings for 1080p sequences relative to x265’s “medium” preset at similar encoding speed for real-time low-latency applications such as live streaming. The average encoding speed of 1080p sequences was reportedly 60 fps on a mainstream PC for the “faster” preset. See also JVET-AF0211.
5. The Youku video streaming service by Alibaba had been commercially deployed to serve video to televisions, including playing video to more than 30 recent television models as of October 2023. With a bit rate savings of 35% to 55% below that of HEVC encoding for movies or TV drama series encoded by the Ali266 encoder at 1080p and 720p, the reduction in bit rate reportedly enabled a reduction in the playback stall rate of approximately 50%. The deployed Youku service had reportedly delivered VVC encoded video to tens of thousands of devices, with a cumulative number of playback events in the millions. See also JVET-AF0211.
6. At IBC in September 2023, Spin Digital demonstrated live 8K 60 fps 10-bit HDR VVC encoding, streaming, and playback.
7. MC-IF published its first release candidate (v1.0-rc) of VVC technical guidelines for broadcast & streaming applications on 15 September 2023, with planned finalization on 10 November 2023. MC-IF is an industry forum with the purpose of furthering the adoption of MPEG standards and has been initially focusing on VVC. The MC-IF VVC technical guidelines document provides a general overview of VVC standard and its usage and configuration aspects including, pre-processing, encoding and post-decoding processes, as well as providing more specific information on VVC usage in broadcast and streaming applications with an -application-centric perspective based on the VVC Main 10 profile. See also JVET-AF0175.