Essential Video Coding

The publicly available requirements document outlines a development process that is defensive against patent threats: Two sets of coding tools, base and enhanced, are defined:

• The base consist of tools that were made public more than 20 years ago or for which a Type 1 declaration is received. Type 1, or option 1, means "royalty-free", in the nomenclature used in ISO documents.
• The "enhanced" set consists of 21{{Cite journal |last1=Samuelsson |first1=Jonatan |last2=Choi |first2=Kiho |last3=Chen |first3=Jianle |last4=Rusanovskyy |first4=Dmytro |title=MPEG-5 Part 1: Essential Video Coding |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9146794 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107221703/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9146794/ |archive-date=November 7, 2020 |journal=SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal |year=2020 |volume=129 |issue=7 |pages=10–16 |publisher=SMPTE |doi=10.5594/JMI.2020.3001795 |s2cid=225463271 |access-date=26 June 2021 |ref=Licenses21Tools21|url-access=subscription }} other tools which have passed an extra compression efficiency justification and which can be disabled individually.

Each of the 21 payable tools can have separately acquired and separately negotiated and separately Traded License agreements. Each can be individually turned off and, when necessary, replaced by a corresponding cost free baseline profile tool. This structure makes it easy to fall back to a smaller set of tools in the future, if, for example, licensing complications occur around a specific tool, without breaking compatibility with already deployed decoders.

This video codec is compatible with hardware accelerators - decoders originally developed for older standards such as AVC/HEVC at least in the Baseline profile.{{cite web |last1=McCann |first1=Ken |title=MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC) |url=https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/20191008/Documents/Ken_McCann_Presentation.pdf?trk=public_post_comment-text |website=itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/20191008/Documents |language=English |quote=EVC uses a novel profile structure. The Baseline profile includes only technologies that are more than 20 years old or that were submitted with a royalty‑free declaration. In contrast, the Main profile adds a small number of additional tools that can be switched off independently—allowing decoders (including hardware accelerators originally developed for older standards such as AVC/HEVC) to continue operating on the Baseline profile.}}

A proposal by Samsung, Huawei and Qualcomm forms the basis of EVC.

• XEVE (eXtra-fast Essential Video Encoder){{Cite web|url=https://github.com/mpeg5/xeve|title=eXtra-fast Essential Video Encoder (XEVE)|date=January 9, 2023|via=GitHub}} is self-described as a fast open source EVC encoder. It is written in C99 and supports both the baseline and main profiles of EVC. Its license is a custom 3-clause BSD license.

• FFmpeg version 7.1{{cite web |url=https://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#eXtra_002dfast-Essential-Video-Encoder-_0028XEVE_0029 |title=1.29 eXtra-fast Essential Video Encoder (XEVE) |website=FFmpeg General Documentation}}{{cite web |url=https://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#eXtra_002dfast-Essential-Video-Decoder-_0028XEVD_0029 |title=1.30 eXtra-fast Essential Video Decoder (XEVD) |website=FFmpeg General Documentation}} officially supports encoding and decoding using official external library above (for encoding) and decoder library: eXtra-fast Essential Video Decoder (XEVD).{{cite web |title=eXtra-fast Essential Video Decoder (XEVD) |url=https://github.com/mpeg5/xevd |website=github}}

MPAI aims to significantly enhance the performance of EVC by improving or replacing traditional tools with AI-based tools, with the goal of reaching at least 25% improvement over the baseline profile of EVC.{{Cite web |title=AI-Enhanced Video Coding (MPAI-EVC) |url=https://mpai.community/standards/mpai-evc/mpai-evc-evidence-project-status-report/ |website=Moving Picture, Audio and data Coding by Artificial Intelligence}}{{Cite web |title=Basic Applications, Technologies and Benefits for Video Coding by means of Artificial Intelligence |url=https://mpai.community/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/HPA-V1.6_.pptx |website=mpai.community/news/presentations/#ShortPresentation|access-date=21 September 2022|date=23 February 2021}}{{Cite web |title=Video Basic Applications, Technologies and Benefits for Video Coding by means of Artificial Intelligence |url=https://platform.wim.tv/embed/?vod=33d669d3-4b28-4db9-b220-2c6fda5dc19d |website=mpai.community/news/presentations/#ShortPresentation|access-date=21 September 2022|date=23 February 2021}}

• MPEG-5 Part 2 / Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding / LCEVC
• H.266 / MPEG-I Part 3 / Versatile Video Coding / VVC
• AV1
• IP core - Semiconductor intellectual property core - Licensing scheme based on similar solutions as for MPEG-5 Part 1: EVC

{{Reflist|30em|refs=

{{Cite web |title=Requirements for a New Video Coding Standard |url=https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/sites/default/files/files/standards/parts/docs/w17928.zip |access-date=6 April 2019 | date=12 October 2018}}

{{Cite news |last1=Pennington |first1=Adrian |title=NAB 2019: Five trends to watch |url=https://www.ibc.org/content-management/nab-2019-five-trends-to-watch/3708.article |access-date=6 April 2019 |publisher=IBC |date=6 April 2019}}

{{Cite web |last1=Timmerer |first1=Christian |title=MPEG 125 Meeting Report |url=https://bitmovin.com/mpeg-125-meeting-report/ |publisher=Bitmovin |access-date=6 April 2019 |date=14 February 2019}}

{{Cite web |last1=Gibellino |first1=Diego |title=Introducing MPEG-5 |url=https://blog.usejournal.com/introducing-mpeg-5-5ed1de2be71b |access-date=6 April 2019 |date=4 March 2019}}

{{Cite web |last1=Chiariglione |first1=Leonardo |title=A crisis, the causes and a solution |url=http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solution/ |access-date=6 April 2019 |date=28 January 2018 |quote=I saw the danger coming and designed a strategy for it. This would create two tracks in MPEG: one track producing royalty free standards (Option 1, in ISO language) and the other the traditional Fair Reasonable and Non Discriminatory (FRAND) standards (Option 2, in ISO language).}}

{{Cite web |last1=Ozer |first1=Jan |title=Inside MPEG's Ambitious Plan to Launch 3 Video Codecs in 2020 |url=https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=134694 |quote=Though the EVC Main profile uses royalty-bearing "tools," these can be switched on and off with "limited loss of performance." This was the model deployed by Divideon and their xvc codec, and, in theory, it allows those deploying the technology to pick and choose both the performance and the associated royalty cost. (…) Two proposals were submitted in response to MPEG's call for proposals for MPEG-5 Part 1, and MPEG selected the proposal from Samsung, Huawei, and Qualcomm |date=October 15, 2019 |access-date=June 12, 2020}}

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• [https://www.iso.org/standard/57797.html Text of the standard on the ISO website] (feature freeze (FDIS status) as of August 2020)

{{Compression formats}}

Category:MPEG

Category:Video compression

Category:Video codecs