Abstract
Versatile Video Coding (VVC) is a new video coding standard finalized in July 2020. During the standard development much attention was paid to keeping the decoding complexity increase as small as possible, with more permissive approach being taken with regard to the encoding. The VVC reference software VTM in random access configuration requires around double the time to decode and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$8\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> the time to encode a video, compared to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) reference software HM. With this runtime increase, an objective bitrate reduction of around 40% is achieved. In this paper we analyze the encoding complexity increase of VVC over HEVC. We abstract the implementation-based aspects, including low-level software optimizations and introduce an empirical measure to quantify the extent of encoder search space given a specific search algorithm. Based on the measure, we compare the search space of HM and VTM, but also of the open and optimized VVC encoder implementation VVenC, showing the potential for search space reduction and its impact on compression performance. Overall, it can be seen that while VVC’s search space is quite large in VTM, it can be efficiently limited either by including early termination strategies or by disabling VVC coding tools.
Highlights
THE Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard [1] was finalized in July 2020
The new standard should provide around 50% bitrate reduction at the same subjective quality over its predecessor, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) [2], jointly developed by the aforementioned bodies
First reports of optimized implementations including real-time decoder implementations [6,7,8] and optimized encoding algorithms [9,10,11,12,13] are available with very improved runtime. Those indicate that the VVC complexity, and its complexity increase when compared to HEVC, can only in limited manner be measured when comparing the reference software runtimes
Summary
THE Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard [1] was finalized in July 2020. The project has been developed by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) of ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG. The new standard should provide around 50% bitrate reduction at the same subjective quality over its predecessor, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) [2], jointly developed by the aforementioned bodies. First reports of optimized implementations including real-time decoder implementations [6,7,8] and optimized encoding algorithms [9,10,11,12,13] are available with very improved runtime Those indicate that the VVC complexity, and its complexity increase when compared to HEVC, can only in limited manner be measured when comparing the reference software runtimes. A theoretical analysis backed by measured software runtime of available implementations [16] indicate the decoding process of VVC to be around two times more complex than HEVC.
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