x266 – A State of the Art Open Source Code for VVC Encoding by MulticoreWare Inc.

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), consisting of video coding experts from MPEG of ISO/IEC and VCEG of ITU-T, reached a key milestone of completing version 1 of the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard in July 2020.

VVC was developed with the targeted goal of achieving twice the coding efficiency of well-known HEVC (Rec. ITU-T H.265 | ISO/IEC 23008-2) standard; i.e. achieving on average about 50% bit rate reduction over HEVC for similar subjective video quality, or achieving significantly better visual quality at similar bit rate as HEVC.

MulticoreWare announces the formation of x266 consortium and development of an open source code for VVC encoding is already underway. Similarly, MulticoreWare’s x265 consortium led the development of the open source code x265 for HEVC based encoding and became the most widely used HEVC encoding software.

Application areas of x266 will include encoding High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD- 4K and 8K) video for broadcasting, live streaming, Over The Top (OTT) video distribution, Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) streaming, video storage and archiving, surveillance, screen content sharing, video teleconferencing, video games, eSports, immersive media such as 360° video, Virtual Reality (VR) etc.

x266 will be able to encode video with Standard, High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut. It will also offer a user flexibility to trade-off speed of encoding with coding efficiency. Initial version of the x266 software will support single layer coding of 10 bits video with 4:2:0 chroma format. More advanced versions will support multilayer coding, higher than 10 bits depth video and higher than 4:2:0 chroma formats.

Dr. Ajay Luthra, CEO Picsel Labs, commented, “With significantly superior efficiency over currently deployed coding standards, VVC will start replacing them and be the driving force behind the success of next generation video distribution and storage products.”

“The x266, an open source VVC codec being developed by MulticoreWare will provide an advantage in the video compression areas by lowering the transmission cost and sustaining the quality for the streaming companies, video conferencing companies and more. The open-source VVC consortium formed by MulticoreWare with major Tier-1 companies will have significant impact in the market,” said Arun Ramanathan, VP & GM – Media & AI Analytics.

About MulticoreWare Inc.

MulticoreWare Inc. develops solutions for machine learning, compilers, and video compression addressing the Security & Surveillance, Media Analytics and Autonomous Vehicle market segments. MulticoreWare is the market leader in x264 & x265 codecs implementations worldwide. Visit https://multicorewareinc.com/video/

x265 and x266 are registered trademarks of MulticoreWare Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

For further details on x266 and/or participating in x266 consortium, please contact: info@multicorewareinc.com

Contacts

Shivakumar Narayanan

MulticoreWare Inc

marcom@multicorewareinc.com