After the finalization of HEVC, the research for further improvements continued. Depending on the selected configuration, HEVC achieves a 40–60% bit rate reduction while maintaining the same visual quality. Compared to its predecessor standard AVC, HEVC considerably increases the coding efficiency. A reference implementation of HEVC is available with the HM software. In 2013, the steady improvement of video coding algorithms resulted in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) which was standardized as MPEG-H Part 2 by ISO/IEC and as H.265 by ITU-T. When comparing only intra coding tools, it is observed that the complexity increases exponentially for linearly increasing coding efficiency.įor several decades, the market for standardized video codecs was dominated by the standardization groups ISO, IEC, and ITU-T: MPEG-1, MPEG-2/H.262, H.263, MPEG-4 Visual, and Advanced Video Coding (AVC, also referred to as MPEG-4 Part 10 and H.264) are some standards in this line. By reporting separate numbers for JVET and AOM test sequences, it is ensured that no bias in the test sequences exists. VTM gains 5% over AV1 in terms of BD-Rates.
![video codec comparison video codec comparison](https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/files/2015/09/ffmpeg-libvpx-openhevc-decoder-speed.png)
AV1 gained a lot in terms of coding efficiency compared to previous versions and now outperforms HM by 24% BD-Rate gains. The worst coding efficiency is achieved by x264 and x265, even in the placebo preset for highest coding efficiency.
![video codec comparison video codec comparison](https://engagemedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/table-h264-and-h265-comparison-1.png)
VTM achieves the highest coding efficiency in both configurations, followed by JEM and AV1.
VIDEO CODEC COMPARISON SOFTWARE
In this paper, we compare the video codecs AV1 (version 1.0.0-2242 from August 2019), HEVC (HM and x265), AVC (x264), the exploration software JEM which is based on HEVC, and the VVC (successor of HEVC) test model VTM (version 4.0 from February 2019) under two fair and balanced configurations: All Intra for the assessment of intra coding and Maximum Coding Efficiency with all codecs being tuned for their best coding efficiency settings.