What They Say
Spin Digital said that it has a new real time encoder for 4K and 8K streaming for the VVC/H.266 codec. The VVC codec is able to compress to lower bitrates than HEVC/H,265 and is targetting a 50% bit rate for the same quality (although the current encoder is achieving just 18%). The encoder is CPU-based and uses Intel Xeon processors (Ice Lake) has been optimized with SIMD processing using Intel AVX-512 and Intel’s Deep Learning Boost instructions, advanced multithreading for systems with tens of CPU cores, and advanced decision algorithms with a modern encoder software architecture.
The new encoder can process 4Kp60 10-bit HDR video in real-time on a single server equipped with two Intel Xeon Platinum processors with a total of 76 CPU cores. On the same server, it is also possible to compress 8Kp30 videos in real-time with similar compression gains.
There is a white paper that can be downloaded here.
What We Think
Obviously, live encoding of 8K and better encoding of 4K HDR content is good news for the display industry. Native 8K content is still somewhat limited, although this is largely mitigated by the high quality upscaling in most 8K sets.
As usual with new CODECs, it will take some time to optimise the settings and parameters of the coded to achieve the full bit rate reduction that is feasible. (BR)
