Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1

Metadata

Publisher: SMPTE — White Plains, NY, USA
Doc Type: Journal Article
Content Type: Original Research
Abbreviated Title: SMPTE Mot. Imag. J
Volume: 130, No. 4, pp. 1–12
Abstract: The recent dramatic increase in video content consumption requires efficient video coding standards, which is specifically true for ultrahigh-definition (UltraHD) resolutions, such as 4K and 8K (i.e., 3840×2160 or 7680×4320 resolutions in terms of luma samples, respectively). The well-known high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) [H.265/Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG)-H] standard was approved in 2013. Although HEVC provides approximately 50% coding gain compared to its predecessor advanced video coding (AVC) (H.264/MPEG-4), its adoption is still relatively slow. In addition, larger bitrate savings than those provided by HEVC are currently in demand. At the same time, work on the versatile video coding (VVC) and essential video coding (EVC) standards started in 2018. After intensive development efforts that continued for two and a half years, these two video coding standards have been recently finalized. VVC (H.266/MPEG-I) was developed jointly by the MPEG and the International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication (ITU-T) Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). On the other hand, EVC (MPEG-5) is an MPEG-only effort. In this paper, we compare the performance of EVC and VVC, in terms of both coding gains and computational complexity, to their predecessor—the HEVC video coding standard. In addition, given the growing popularity of the AV1 video codec, which was recently developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), we also include AV1 as an alternative baseline and provide corresponding comparison results. According to the experimental results, which have been carried out in a constant bitrate (CBR) mode, EVC provides about 30% bitrate savings compared to HEVC for encoding 4K/2160p entertainment content (such as VoD) in terms of Bjøntegaard-delta bitrate (BD-BR) peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)YUV, while introducing an encoding computational complexity increase of approximately five times. VVC provides larger bitrate savings of about 40% at a price of a significant encoding computational complexity increase of more than nine times. When the performance of HEVC CBR encoding (i.e., with the rate control disabled) was compared to that of AV1 VBR encoding (i.e., with the rate control enabled), it was found that AV1 provides bitrate savings of about 20% compared to HEVC for encoding 4K/2160p video sequences, as a tradeoff of an encoding computational complexity increase by a factor of approximately four. The authors find both EVC and VVC to be very promising successors to HEVC in terms of coding gains and computational complexity, but the jury is still out on the speed of their adoption.
Publication Date: 2021-05-01
DOI: 10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442
ISSN: Print: 1545-0279 | Electronic: 2160-2492
Link: https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442
Author(s): Dan Grois
bio
Dan Grois received a PhD degree from the Communication Systems Engineering Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Be’er Sheva, Israel, in 2011, where he was a senior researcher until 2013. From mid-2013 until 2017, he was a senior researcher with the Video Coding and Analytics Department, Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications – Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), Berlin, Germany. Since 2017, he has been a principal researcher at Comcast, Philadelphia, PA, where he is mainly working on advanced perceptual video quality optimization techniques for HDR ultrahigh definition (UHD) video coding, including neural network-based optimizations. He was granted various fellowships, including the Kreitman Fellowships, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) Alain Bensoussan Fellowship, and Marie Skodowska-Curie Fellowship. In addition, he actively participates in the video standardization activities of International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) and International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunication (ITU-T) organizations, such as Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) and Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET), and is an active contributor of the high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) and versatile video coding (VVC) standards. He is an author/coauthor of more than 70 publications in the area of image/video coding and data processing. Since 2021, he is an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video (TCSVT).
Alex Giladi
bio
Alex Giladi is a Fellow of Comcast, Philadelphia, PA. He has been working on issues related to video content encoding and distribution since 2000. His current areas of interest are open-source video encoding and adaptive streaming. He has been working on the aspects of distributed content-adaptive video encoding, adaptive streaming distribution, content security, and cloud digital video recorder (DVR). He has been a prolific contributor to the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG)-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) standard and served as an editor of several standards and amendments related to DASH, content security, and MPEG-2 systems. He is the Vice President of the DASH Industry Forum. He holds an MSEE degree from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and a BSc degree from the Technion, Haifa, Israel. He has multiple U.S. patents in the area of adaptive streaming.
Kiho Choi
bio
Kiho Choi received a BS degree (summa cum laude) in information and communication engineering and a PhD degree from the Department of Communication and Electronics and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He was a research associate and a lecturer with Hanyang University in 2013. He joined Samsung Research, Seoul, in 2014. Since 2014, he has been a technical leader with the Department of Video Coding Standard, Samsung Research. He is currently an associate professor with the Department of AI-Software, Gachen University, Seongnam, South Korea. Since 2009, he has been an active participant in standardization for multimedia. He has served several chairs of ad hoc groups in ISO/IEC MPEG and JVET committees. He has authored more than 200 MPEG contribution articles and more than 30 journal or conference articles. His current research interests include image and video coding, multimedia data compression, multimedia streaming, and AI-based multimedia technology. He is a lead editor and an ad hoc group chair of the MPEG-5 Part 1 Essential Video Coding (EVC) Standard.
Min Woo Park
bio
Min Woo Park received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in computer engineering from Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2003, 2005, and 2009, respectively. Since 2009, he has been a principal engineer and a software architect at Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Seoul. He has been working as a Korean delegate for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG) since 2004. He has been involved in the scalable and the multiview extensions of H.264/advanced video coding (AVC), the multiview extension of HEVC (3D-HEVC), VVC, and MPEG-5 EVC standards. His current research interests are video coding, neural network-based video coding, video signal processing, and multimedia systems.
Yinji Piao
bio
Yinji Piao received a BS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China, in 2004, and MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea, in 2006 and 2010, respectively. She joined Samsung Electronics in 2010 as a senior research engineer with the Multimedia Platform Laboratory, Suwon, South Korea. She is currently a principal research engineer with Global AI Center in Samsung Research, Seoul, South Korea. Since 2010, she has been actively involved in the development of various video coding standards, including the HEVC standard, scalable HEVC, Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS2), and most recently the VVC standard, MPEG-5 EVC standard, and AVS3 standard. Her research interests include video coding, image coding, and image resolution enhancement.
Minsoo Park
bio
Minsoo Park received BS and MS degrees in computer engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Since 2015, he has been an engineer at Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Seoul. He has been a Korean delegate for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG) since 2018. He has been involved in VVC and MPEG-5 EVC standards. His current research interests are moving picture coding, video signal processing, and neural network-based compression.
Kwang Pyo Choi
bio
Kwang Pyo Choi, PhD, is a master at Samsung Electronics, Research Center, Seoul, South Korea. He has been contributing to the development of video codecs and standardizations. Since 2010, he has made numerous contributions to ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG), ISO/IEC MPEG for several standards such as HEVC, VVC, and EVC. His research interests lie in the area of image and video processing, with emphasis on compression, streaming, and realtime processing. In recent years, he has focused on image and video compression and quality enhancement technology using artificial intelligence.
Keyword(s): AV1, AVC, Codec Comparison, Coding Efficiency, Computational Complexity, Essential Video Coding (EVC), H.264, H.265, H.266, HEVC, MPEG, Video Coding Gain, Video Compression, Versatile Video Coding
Copyright: © 2021 SMPTE

Bibliographic Reference(s)

D. Grois and A. Giladi, “Perceptual Quantization Matrices for High Dynamic Range H.265/MPEG-HEVC Video Coding,” Proc. SPIE 11137, Appl. Digital Image Process. XLII, 111370O, 2020. EXTERNAL
Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) HM Reference Software, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hevc.hhi.fraunhofer.de/ EXTERNAL
D. Grois, B. Bross, D. Marpe, and K. Sühring, “HEVC/H.265 Video Coding Standard: Part 2,” Accessed: 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6a1AW5xyAw&t=5s EXTERNAL
Git Repositories on Aomedia, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/tags/v2.0.0 EXTERNAL
F. Bossen, J. Boyce, X. Li, V. Seregin, and K. Sühring, “JVET Common Test Conditions and Software Reference Configurations for SDR Video,” Document JVET-N1010, 14th JVET Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, Mar. 19–27, 2019. EXTERNAL
J. Ohm, G. J. Sullivan, H. Schwarz, T. K. Tan, and T. Wiegand, “Comparison of the Coding Efficiency of Video Coding Standards— Including High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC),” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., 22(12):1669–1684, Dec. 2012. EXTERNAL
“Common Test Conditions for Essential Video Coding,” Document N18798, 128th MPEG Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 7–11, 2019. authors find both EVC and VVC to be very promising successors of HEVC. Conclusion This study compares the performance of emerging MPEG-5 EVC and H.266/MPEG-VVC video compression standards with that of their predecessor H.265/MPEG-HEVC. In addition, given the growing popularity of the AV1 video codec, AV1 is included as an alternative baseline. Particularly, it was determined that the coding gain of VVC in terms of BD-BR PSNRYUV is larger than that of EVC, and it is about 40% for encoding 4K/2160p video sequences; however, this comes with a very significant computational complexity increase by a factor of more than 9 compared to HEVC and by a factor of approximately 2 compared to EVC. In turn, EVC achieves bitrate savings of about 30% for 4K/2160p encoding. On the other hand, for encoding FHD/1080p video sequences, VVC achieves bitrate savings of ~37% over HEVC, while the corresponding bitrate savings of EVC are ~23%. Furthermore, when testing the AV1 encoder in a twopass VBR mode, for the 4K/2160p and FHD/1080p encoding, it was found that AV1 provides bitrate savings of ~20% and ~24%, respectively. Based on the extensive experimental results presented in this work for a wide range of resolutions, frame rates, and bit depths, the authors find both EVC and VVC to be very promising successors to HEVC. However, the jury is still out on the speed of their adoption. EXTERNAL
D. Grois, T. Nguyen, and D. Marpe, “Performance Comparison of AV1, JEM, VP9, and HEVC Encoders,” Proc. SPIE 10396, Appl. Digital Image Process. XL, 103960L, 2018. EXTERNAL
“Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2018–2023,” Cisco Systems Inc., Mar. 9, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/executive-per-spectives/annual-internet-report/white-paper-c11-741490.pdf EXTERNAL
Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) Joint Exploration Test Model (JEM) Reference Software, Accessed: 2018. [Online]. Available: https://jvet.hhi.fraunhofer.de/svn/svn_HMJEMSoftware/ EXTERNAL
Y. Chen et al., “An Overview of Coding Tools in AV1: The First Video Codec From the Alliance for Open Media,” APSIPA Trans. Signal Inf. Process., 9:E6, Feb. 2020. EXTERNAL
Alliance for Open Media, Press Release, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: http://aomedia.org EXTERNAL
D. Grois, D. Marpe, T. Nguyen, and O. Hadar, “Comparative Assessment of H.265/MPEG-HEVC, VP9, and H.264/MPEG-AVC Encoders for Low-Delay Video Applications,” Proc. SPIE, vol. 9217, Sept. 2014. EXTERNAL
F. Bossen, “Common HM Test Conditions and Software Reference Configurations,” Document JCTVC-L1100 of JCT-VC, Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 2013. EXTERNAL
Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) VTM Reference Software, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://vcgit.hhi.fraunhofer.de/jvet/VVCSoftware_VTM EXTERNAL
K. Choi, J. Chen, D. Rusanovskyy, K. Choi, and E. S. Jang, “An Overview of the MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding Standard [Standards in a Nutshell],” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., 37(3):160–167, May 2020. EXTERNAL
MPEG-5 ETM Reference Software, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://gitlab.com/MPEG-5/ETM.git EXTERNAL
B. Bross, J. Chen, S. Liu, and Y.-K. Wang, “Versatile Video Coding (Draft 9),” Document JVET-R2001, 18th JVET Meeting, by teleconference, Apr. 15–24, 2020. EXTERNAL
Git Repositories on Aomedia, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://aomedia.googlesource.com/ EXTERNAL
D. Grois, T. Nguyen, and D. Marpe, “Coding Efficiency Comparison of AV1/VP9, H.265/MPEG-HEVC, and H.264/MPEG-AVC Encoders,” Picture Coding Symp. (PCS), pp. 1–5, Dec. 2016. EXTERNAL
Chromium Open-Source Browser Project, VP9 Source Code, Accessed: 2013. [Online]. Available: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tree;f=vp9;hb=aaf61dfbcab414bfacc3171501be17d191ff8506 EXTERNAL
Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) VTM Reference Software, Version 9.0, Accessed: 2020. [Online]. Available: https://vcgit.hhi.fraunhofer.de/jvet / V VCSoftware_V TM /-/ releases#VTM-9.0 EXTERNAL
D. Grois, T. Nguyen, and D. Marpe, “Coding Efficiency Comparison of AV1/VP9, H.265/MPEG-HEVC, and H.264/ MPEG-AVC Encoders,” Picture Coding Symp. (PCS), 2016, Dec. 4–7, 2016. EXTERNAL
M. Řeřábek and T. Ebrahimi, “Comparison of Compression Efficiency Between HEVC/H.265 and VP9 Based on Subjective Assessments,” Proc. SPIE 9217, Appl. Digital Image Process. XXXVII, 92170U, 2014. EXTERNAL
J. Bankoski, P. Wilkins, and X. Yaowu, “Technical Overview of VP8, An Open Source Video Codec for the Web,” 2011 IEEE Int. Conf. Multimedia Expo (ICME), pp. 1, 6, Jul. 11–15, 2011. EXTERNAL
D. Grois, D. Marpe, A. Mulayoff, B. Itzhaky, and O. Hadar, “Performance Comparison of H.265/MPEG-HEVC, VP9, and H.264/MPEG-AVC Encoders,” Picture Coding Symp. (PCS), 2013, pp. 394–397, Dec. 8–11, 2013. EXTERNAL
G. Bjøntegaard, “Calculation of Average PSNR Differences Between RD-Curves,” ITU-T Q.6/SG16 VCEG 13th Meeting, Document VCEG-M33, Austin, USA, Apr. 2001. EXTERNAL
“Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021,” Cisco Systems Inc., Feb. 2019. [Online]. Available: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/complete-white-paper-c11-481360.html EXTERNAL
D. Grois, B. Bross, D. Marpe, and K. Sühring, “HEVC/H.265 Video Coding Standard: Part 1,” Accessed: 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLNkK5C1KN8&t=764s EXTERNAL
ITU-T REC H.265 [Active]

Source Data (JSON)

Full registry record with provenance metadata. Open directly: /api/doc/10.5594-JMI.2021.3065442.json

Reference Tree

Explore all references and references to this document, as a navigable tree.

Open Reference Tree

Reference this Doc

Plain text (ISO 690 compliant)

Preview:

Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Kiho Choi, Min Woo Park, Yinji Piao, Minsoo Park, and Kwang Pyo Choi; Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 130, Issue: 4, May 2021); SMPTE, 2021. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442

Snippet:

Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Kiho Choi, Min Woo Park, Yinji Piao, Minsoo Park, and Kwang Pyo Choi; Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 130, Issue: 4, May 2021); SMPTE, 2021. Available at https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442

HTML (ISO 690 compliant)

Preview:

Snippet:

<span class="citation">Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Kiho Choi, Min Woo Park, Yinji Piao, Minsoo Park, and Kwang Pyo Choi; <cite>Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 130, Issue: 4, May 2021); SMPTE, 2021. Available at <a href="https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442</a></span>

SMPTE's HTML Pub

Preview:

Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Kiho Choi, Min Woo Park, Yinji Piao, Minsoo Park, and Kwang Pyo Choi; Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 130, Issue: 4, May 2021); SMPTE, 2021
doi: 10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442
url: https://doi.org/10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442

Snippet:

<li>
Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Kiho Choi, Min Woo Park, Yinji Piao, Minsoo Park, and Kwang Pyo Choi; <cite id="bib-10-5594-jmi-2021-3065442">Performance Comparison of Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1</cite>, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal ( Volume: 130, Issue: 4, May 2021); SMPTE, 2021
<span class="doi">10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442</span>
</li>

Metadata

Bibliographic Reference(s)

Reference Tree

Plain text (ISO 690 compliant)

HTML (ISO 690 compliant)

SMPTE's HTML Pub

Referenced By