Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud releases the real-time high-definition VVC encoder Ali266, which truly opens the way for VVC commercial use

Based on the new generation of international video codec standard H.266/VVC, Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud recently released the real-time high-definition encoder Ali266, which strongly promotes the implementation of H.266/VVC standard applications and truly opens the way for H.266/VVC commercialization , And strongly empower the real popularization of ultra-high-definition 4K, 8K, and AR/VR applications.

Encoder Ali266 = real time + HD + ultra compression

Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud released the first version of the real-time high-definition VVC encoder Ali266 in mid-July. According to publicly available information, this is currently world's fastest VVC encoder .

Specifically, in a 12-thread configuration, Ali266's fast-grade encoding speed is 3062 times that of the VVC standard reference software, and 720p high-definition real-time encoding is realized on mainstream personal computers.

Based on the general test conditions officially recommended by the standardization organization, Ali266 can effectively accelerate the encoding speed of VVC. Compared with the encoding speedup ratio of the VVC standard reference software, is 1610b938145b00 over 3000 times in various test video sequences.

For example, if you use the VVC standard reference software to transcode a movie, it takes 1 month and , then Ali266 transcoding, only need less than 15 minutes minutes to complete.

The value of Ali266 encoding speed is focused on three points: greatly saving the computing power required by the VVC standard, achieving high-definition real-time in the first time, and effectively promoting the implementation of the latest encoding technology .

real-time encoding , such as audio and video live broadcasts, online meetings, and cloud games, to use the most advanced VVC standard, bringing clearer videos to billions with lower bandwidth. Ten thousand consumers, and more importantly, can strongly promote the landing application of emerging video applications such as AR/VR and ultra-high-definition.

Similar to most commercial encoders, Ali266 can also provide different speed grades according to different application requirements. Under the same quality, Ali266 can save 35%~50% The bandwidth is . If the encoding performance is converted into bandwidth cost, assuming that the bandwidth cost of using the x265 encoder for a year is 1 billion, then the use of the Ali266 encoder is expected to save 350 to 500 million in bandwidth cost.

In addition to helping businesses save bandwidth and computing costs, ensuring real-time and high-definition experience is the key to the encoder Ali266. Ali266 can cope with more complex network conditions around the world, and under the condition of limited network bandwidth resources, it can bring users a smoother and clearer video experience. can only watch SD users on weak networks, and now they can get high-definition video. Experience .

How important is H.266/VVC to video?

Scenes such as chasing web dramas, watching blockbuster movies, "buying and buying" in live broadcast rooms, and video conferencing truly reflect that modern young people's life and work styles are inseparable from a variety of video applications. Especially in the past year, it has witnessed the unprecedented events of mankind in a century, and witnessed the vigorous development of various video applications, and the amount of video data carried by the network has therefore witnessed an explosive growth on a larger scale.

amount of video data for 1610b938145bf3? can take a movie with 30 frames per second and 720p resolution as an example. If the movie is 90 minutes long, the bandwidth you need to watch the movie without video compression is at least 332Mbps, and storing this movie will consume 224GB, which is unbearable for any consumer.

Therefore, video needs to be compressed and encoded before it can be transmitted and stored. This process is video encoding. interconnection between different video products and equipment of different companies, video coding needs to be standardized . With the video coding standard as a specification that each manufacturer must follow, the video code stream encoded by a certain video content supplier can be decoded and played on the mobile phones or TV equipment of different manufacturers.

In order to cope with the explosive growth of the amount of video data generated by human society, video coding standards are evolving continuously following its own "Moore's Law". ITU-T and ISO/IEC MPEG, the two major international video standards organizations, will jointly launch a new generation of video coding standards every few years, and the compression rate has doubled compared with the previous generation.

In the past 30 years, the video standards jointly formulated by these two major video standards organizations have had a profound impact on the video industry, triggering many technological changes and innovations in the video industry.

For example, the H.262/MPEG-2 standard has promoted the transformation from analog TV to digital TV; H.264/AVC has made high-definition video and Internet video widely promoted; H.265/HEVC has successfully promoted HDR and 4K ultra-high-definition video Landing.

H.266/VVC standard new generation flagship video standard jointly launched by these two major standards organizations. VVC standard was released in July 2020, compared to the HEVC standard may reduce by half the bandwidth costs . In addition, VVC can provide better support for live streaming, on-demand, video conferencing and other streaming media and real-time communication through adaptive bandwidth and resolution, and improve the user's real-time HD experience, and such as AR/VR, HDR video, 360 Full-degree panoramic video, screen content, and ultra-high-definition 4K, 8K and other emerging video applications under 5G .

How did the first version of Ali266 come from?

Although the VVC standard has strong compression efficiency, there is still a long way to go to promote the commercialization of the VVC standard. This is because the VVC standard provides more than 30 latest coding tools. How the encoder chooses these coding tools and combinations reasonably to get the bonus of VVC's high compression efficiency, which puts a very high computing power requirement on the encoder.

It is for this reason that the encoding speed of VVC's reference software platform is very slow, and the encoding speed of 720p video cannot even reach 0.01 fps. Even though the world's first open source VVC encoder is much faster than the VVC reference software, the encoding speed of 720p video can only reach about 10 fps.

In order to overcome this technical problem, Alibaba's video team began to devote all efforts to the development of VVC software codec shortly after the release of the H.266/VVC standard.

On December 30, 2020, five months after the official release of the H.266/VVC standard, Alibaba released its self-developed mobile real-time decoder Ali266 . Experiments have proved that integrating Ali266's live video, short video and other applications, only 2 threads can smoothly play 720p high-definition video on low-end mobile phones in real time, which greatly saves computing power consumption and can benefit all mobile scenarios. , Which verifies the practicability of the VVC standard to a great extent.

After completing the release of the VVC decoder, Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud immediately invested in the research and development of the VVC encoder. The is to develop a VVC encoder that can provide different gears according to different applications, and has offline and real-time processing capabilities. to live broadcast, short video, online meetings, cloud games and other fields.

With deep cultivation and accumulation in the field of video coding, the video standards team launched the first version of the Ali266 encoder in only half a year.

On the one hand, Ali266 improves encoding quality and compression efficiency by implementing multiple encoding algorithms, such as motion compensation time-domain filtering, adaptive GOP size decision-making, scene switching detection, screen content detection, bit rate control technology, etc. On the other hand, it has developed hundreds of fast coding algorithms, as well as engineering optimization methods such as multi-threading technology, assembly instructions, and memory access efficiency.

Public information shows that Ali266 is the industry's first real-time high-definition VVC encoding capability ! The first version achieved a 35%~50% lower bandwidth cost than the corresponding speed grade of the x265 open source encoder. While ensuring high-definition real-time encoding speed, it also perfectly proved the powerful compression efficiency of VVC.

In July 2021, as the first real-time high-definition VVC software encoder, Ali266 took an important step in the industry, proving that the existing computing power platform allows us to fully enjoy the powerful compression capabilities of the latest international standard VVC. But for Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud, this has just reached its first important milestone.

Looking to the future, the video cloud team will continue to advance the deep optimization of the VVC encoder. with full HD real-time encoding capabilities, 4K real-time encoding capabilities, and even 8K real-time encoding capabilities, and continue to improve compression efficiency. , To accelerate the commercial implementation of the VVC standard. At the same time, it will also be committed to continuously expanding the application of artificial intelligence in video coding, so that video coding and decoding technology can be taken to the next level.

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