MC-IF Sees Progress in VVC Adoption
The President of the MC-IF, Justin Ridge was interviewed by Lane Cooper of BizTech Reports as part of a review of developments in the video codec industry and particularly the adoption of the VVC codec. Ridge is the principal engineer at Nokia’s Multimedia Research and Standardization Unit. The MC-IF is the trade association that exists to coordinate the development and deployment of new codecs once they have been standardized by MPEG.
A 2024 Review
Ridge started by looking back at developments in 2024 and identified the most noteworthy example of progress as the inclusion by Intel of VVC decoding in their Lunar Lake line (Xe2 GPUs) from their release in September. FFMPEG also integrated VVC encode and decode from the middle of the year. Although it was suggested that VVC is developing faster than HEVC, Ridge was a little more circumspect. In his view there is a ‘fair degree of similarity’ with the roll-out of HEVC.
Looking forward, Ridge identified three key areas of development. First there is ‘grass roots interest’ in VVC which is probably the result of the FFMPEG development. There is always an interest in higher levels of compression, which VVC can deliver. Secondly, more consumer electronics (CE) devices will use VVC with more and more TV chipsets mentioning the technology. The adoption of VVC in Brazil will help to promote the inclusion as chip companies like to have global economies of scale. (The writer is reminded that the push to include GPS in smartphones worldwide was triggered by a mandate from the Japanese government).
Mobile Adoption Would be a Big Boost
If mobile chipsets could include VVC, there would be a big boost in adoption. At the moment, VVC hasn’t hit mobile devices in a big way, although there are now software decoders, which Ridge sees as a pre-cursor to hardware adoption. He hopes to see hardware in 2025 or soon after. There have been demoes using quite old handsets. In India, there have been implementations of ‘a more commercial nature’. (At the 4K HDR forum in the fall, Paul Gray of Omdia highlighted that mobile data is ‘effectively free’ in India and mobile is the first way that viewers are accessing video content. There were 20 channels of streamed video from the Olympics, for example. – editor)
Responding to a question about the key considerations for potential adopters, Ridge said that much depends on whether you are in a controlled or open environment. However, there are other factors. For example if you ‘saturate a cell site’ you can throttle the existing one or put up a new one, which, he pointed out ‘is not trivial’. An alternative is to choose a better codec, like VVC. There is a balance between existing legacy devices and new ones when it comes to supporting new technology. Nobody wants to cut off old devices too early. There can also be logistical questions of whether all your content providers can support a new codec. There is, as always, a ‘chicken and egg’ challenge between new codecs and devices.
All Moving In the Right Direction
Ridge thinks that all parts of the industry are ‘moving in the right direction’ but at different speeds. Some have long-lived products that are tweaked and optimized, but others, like smartphones, have a fast turnover. Looking at financial issues, Ridge again highlighted that the situation is different for each company. There are obvious costs to implementing new codecs such as new equipment requirements. Some equipment might be upgradable to VVC but there are also licensing costs. As we saw in the article on Jan Ozer’s comments a couple of weeks ago, saving bitrates can be helpful, for example by allowing more channels over a given level of spectrum.
At the moment, VVC is ‘the State of the Art’ – you can maintain quality by saving bits or you can boost quality without increasing your bitrate. Ridge emphasized that VVC has ‘a very reasonable decoder complexity’ which means high resolution and good frame rates without excessive battery usage even with software decoding. This means that VVC can be put into lower end products. It is also very well engineered and has been tested with great rigor, so it is very technically mature even when it is first released. It also has a lot of different use cases and that can spread the use and the cost of implementation. Versatility has been a core part of the new codec.
MC-IF Can Support the Community
MC-IF can support the community of adopters by continuing the education of the market and helping the understanding of the benefits – beyond the ‘dry technical details’. It also wants to understand if people think that the standard doesn’t meet their needs. Spectrum costs a lot and video takes a large chunk of that spectrum so there are real economic benefits to more efficient coding. The MC-IF hopes to bring new participants into the ecosystem beyond ‘the usual suspects’. Video is now important in automotive, drones and surveillance and in some cases the world is now completely digital with codecs being essential and no analog video at all. Companies in these industries are now more interested in ensuring that the standards meet their needs. All are welcome to join MC-IF and to help ‘put their stamp’ on MC-IF recommendations.
