Versatile Video Coding (VVC)

Overview

JVET was founded as the Joint Video Exploration Team (on Future Video coding) of ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG in October 2015. After a successful call for proposals, it transitioned into the Joint Video Experts Team (also abbreviated to JVET) in April 2018 with the task to develop a new video coding standard.

The new video coding standard was named Versatile Video Coding (VVC). It is registered as ITU-T Recommendation H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3.

Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) Messages and Video Usage Information (VUI) are moved into a separate specification named Versatile supplemental enhancement information messages for coded video bitstreams (VSEI), registered as ITU-T Recommendation H.274 | ISO/IEC 23002-7.

Documents

• Versatile Video Coding Editorial Refinements on Draft 10 (JVET-T2001)
• Versatile supplemental enhancement information messages for coded video bitstreams Draft 5 (JVET-S2007)
• Common Test Conditions for SDR video (JVET-T2010)
• Common Test Conditions for HDR/WCG video (JVET-T2011)
• Common Test Conditions for 360 degree video (JVET-L1012)
• Common Test Conditions for non-4:2:0 colour formats (JVET-T2013)
• Common Test Conditions for lossless, near lossless, and mixed lossy/lossless (JVET-Q2014)
• Common Test Conditions for high bit depth and high bit rate (JVET-U2018)
• JVET documents site

VVC reference software

The reference software for VVC is the VVC Test Model (VTM).

VVC Test Model (VTM)

The VVC reference software was started with a minimal set of coding tools. Additional tools are added after testing in Core Experiments (CEs).

The software is developed using the git version control system and a GitLab server.

• VTM GitLab page
• Instructions for registration and development
• Instructions for CE development

Old SVN repository (before version 2.0):

• VTM software repository (Subversion)
• VTM software repository (source browser)

VVC reference software documentation

• VTM algorithm description (JVET-T2002)
• Software Guidelines (JVET-N1003)

Discontinued software

Benchmark Set (BMS)

The Benchmark Set (BMS) software was created for additional testing of proposed tools in a framework that is more feature-rich than VTM. BMS contains tools that were originally proposed in the JEM software. The BMS software has no official status.

The BMS software is no longer maintained.

• BMS GitLab page

Old SVN repository (before version 2.0):

• BMS software repository (Subversion)

Joint Exploration Model (JEM)

JEM was the experimental software of the Joint Video Exploration Team, which contains coding tools that were studied for achieving coding performance beyond HEVC.

The software effort was originally started by VCEG under the name HM KTA. The software repository therefore contains some version tags using the old KTA name. Recent versions are tagged under the newer name JEM. The JEM software is based on the HEVC Model (HM) software that was jointly developed as reference software for the HEVC standard.

The JEM software is no longer maintained.

• JEM software repository (Subversion)
• JEM software repository (source browser)

Bug reporting

Bugs for specification text and software shall be reported in the bug tracker.

• VVC bug tracker