New video format promises to half data consumption in 4K, 8K videos

H.265/HEVC standard offers faster video transmission for streaming quality. This standard not only reduces the data consumption but it also reduces the storage space required for these high quality videos.

As of now the H.265/HEVC standard requires approximately 10GB of data to transmit a 90-min in ultra high definition video video streaming quality. (Pixabay)

Videos have become the way of life in the year 2020. From video sharing apps to streaming platforms and from online classes to conference calls, the use of videos has radically increased in the past couple of months. Along with the increased consumption of videos, daily data usage of individuals has also gone up exponentially. Now, a new video compression technology promises to reduce this data consumption into half.

For your reference, as of now the H.265/HEVC standard, which is one of the most widely used video-encoding standards today, requires approximately 10GB of data to transmit a 90-min in ultra high definition video video streaming quality. Now, the new standard called H.266/VVC promises to use only 5GB of data are while maintaining the same quality.

The new H.266/VVC standard has been developed by the Fraunhofer HHI in association with companies such as Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Sony. The researchers say that the new standard reduces data requirements by around 50% of the bit rate relative to the previous standard H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) without compromising visual quality.

Simply said, H.265/HEVC standard offers faster video transmission for streaming quality. What's more? This standard not only reduces the data consumption but it also reduces the storage space required for these high quality videos.

“Overall, H.266/VVC provides efficient transmission and storage of all video resolutions from SD to HD up to 4K and 8K, while supporting high dynamic range video and omnidirectional 360° video,” the institute said in a press release.

Now, all that sounds great. But there is one big issue. This newly developed video standard cannot be deployed just yet. Reason? It is because our hardware, which includes devices such as TVs, PCs and smartphones aren't capable of making use of this technology yet. But the good news is that Dr Thomas Schierl, who is the head of the Video Coding and Analytics department at Fraunhofer HHI, is working on chips that support this technology. This means that our future devices will consume less data while streaming higher quality videos.