Introduction to HEVC (H.265)

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is an emerging new standard for digital video compression. It is intended as a successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard. Currently, it is in its final draft form and is expected to be finalized in the early parts of 2012. It is being developed by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). It has sometimes been referred to as "H.265", since many consider it a clear successor to H.264 but, its official name at this time is HEVC.

The objective of HEVC standard is to substantially improve the efficiency of coding as compared to H.264/AVC High Profile. More specifically, HEVC should reduce the effective bitrate down to half of comparable video quality AVC High Profile encoding. This bit reduction would be gained at the expanse of higher complexity in the encoder computation thus, requiring higher CPU power then AVC High Profile. Decoding of HEVC promises to be not much higher in CPU usage then AVC High Profile Decoding.

HEVC target applications are HD Video Communications, next generation HDTV and Mobile (wireless) Video Streaming. HEVC promises many improvements for these demanding applications. Higher then 1920x1080 resolutions, including support for Ultra HDTV at 7680x4320; improved picture quality through belter noise levels, color gamut and dynamic range.

Vanguard Software Solutions, Inc. (VSS) has over 10 years of CODEC development experience. VSS was first to introduce H.264 real-time PC CODEC SDK shortly after the standard was published. VSS plans to be among the first to provide PC software and Hardware HEVC CODEC Solutions. The HEVC standard allows for wide ranging implementations in terms of video quality, computational complexity and encoding and decoding latency. VSS will initially target the HEVC CODEC requirements of video communication market with HEVC Low Complexity, Low Delay (LoCo) profile utilizing only I and P frames. VSS next target will be HDTV broadcast and wireless streaming where an HEVC High Efficiency, Low Delay profile will be used. VSS is planning to introduce its first commercial product as PC software Encoder and Decoder SDK, then to follow up with an FPGA and ASIC IP Cores. For more information on VSS commercial implementations including HEVC performance gains over H.264 implementations please contact VSS directly.