Abstract-Advances in video compression technology have been driven by ever-increasing processing power available in software and hardware. The emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard aims to provide a doubling in coding efficiency with respect to the H.264/AVC high profile, delivering the same video quality at half the bit rate. In this paper, complexity-related aspects that were considered in the standardization process are described. Furthermore, profiling of reference software and optimized software gives an indication of where HEVC may be more complex than its predecessors and where it may be simpler. Overall, the complexity of HEVC decoders does not appear to be significantly different from that of H.264/AVC decoders; this makes HEVC decoding in software very practical on current hardware. HEVC encoders are expected to be several times more complex than H.264/AVC encoders and will be a subject of research in years to come.Index Terms-High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), video coding.

Versatile Video Coding (VVC) was finalized in July 2020 as the most recent international video coding standard. It was developed by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) to serve an ever-growing need for improved video compression as well as to support a wider variety of today's media content and emerging applications. This paper provides an overview of the novel technical features for new applications and the core compression technologies for achieving significant bit rate reductions in the neighborhood of 50% over its predecessor for equal video quality, the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, and 75% over the currently most-used format, the Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard. It is explained how these new features in VVC provide greater versatility for applications. Highlighted applications include video with resolutions beyond standard-and high-definition, video with high dynamic range and wide color gamut, adaptive streaming with resolution changes, computer-generated and screen-captured video, ultralow-delay streaming, 360° immersive video, and multilayer coding e.g., for scalability. Furthermore, early implementations are presented to show that the new VVC standard is implementable and ready for real-world deployment.

In the last 17 years, since the finalization of the first version of the now-dominant H.264/Moving Picture Experts Group-4 (MPEG-4) Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard in 2003, two major new generations of video coding standards have been developed. These include the standards known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC). HEVC was finalized in 2013, repeating the ten-year cycle time set by its predecessor and providing about 50% bit-rate reduction over AVC. The cycle was shortened by three years for the VVC project, which was finalized in July 2020, yet again achieving about a 50% bit-rate reduction over its predecessor (HEVC). This article summarizes these developments in video coding standardization after AVC. It especially focuses on providing an overview of the first version of VVC, including comparisons against HEVC. Besides further advances in hybrid video compression, as in previous development cycles, the broad versatility of the application domain that is

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