A VVC/H.266 Real-time
Software Encoder for UHD
Live Video Applications
Spin Digital | Whitepaper | August 2nd 2022 | Version 1.0

Spin Digital Video Technologies GmbH
Helmholtzstraße 2-9. 10587 Berlin, Germany
www.spin-digital.com | info@spin-digital.com

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 2 of 49

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARY3

INTRODUCTION: TRENDS IN LIVE MEDIA APPLICATIONS

4

THE VVC/H.266 STANDARD AND ITS APPLICATIONS

5VVC TARGET APPLICATIONS

5VVC FOR LIVE

6

VVC ENCODERS: VOD VS LIVE

7

SPIN DIGITAL’S VVC REAL-TIME ENCODER

8ENCODER ASSESSMENT FOR 4K-UHD STREAMING AND BROADCASTING

8

VIDEO SEQUENCES

9

VIDEO ENCODERS

11

ENCODING SETTINGS

11

COMPARISON METRICS

12COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY AND ENCODING COMPLEXITY

14COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY PER SEQUENCE

18

SELECTED QUALITY-BITRATE PLOTS

18

MULTITHREADED ENCODING SPEED

21

RECOMMENDED BITRATE FOR 4K LIVE VIDEO

25

4K/8K VVC LIVE STREAMING AND BROADCASTING

28

CONCLUSIONS

33

APPENDIX: TECHNICAL DATA SHEET OF THE TEST VIDEO SEQUENCES

35

REFERENCES

46

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

1.

Page 3 of 49

SUMMARY

Versatile Video Coding (VVC) is the newest video coding standard designed tosigniﬁcantly reduce the bitrate over its predecessor, High Eﬃciency Video Coding(HEVC), as well as to facilitate next-generation video applications.
Spin Digital has succeeded in developing a VVC real-time software encoder for Ultra HD(4K and 8K) live streaming and broadcasting. Its ﬁrst version achieves 18% bitratesavings at equal quality compared to Spin Digital’s HEVC real-time encoder, anindustry-leading encoder for its high performance and compression eﬃciency.
The new VVC encoder can process 4Kp60 and 8Kp30 10-bit HDR videos in real-timeusing a single server with a state-of-the-art dual-socket CPU architecture. In the near
future, through the use of advanced encoding algorithms and next-generation CPU
architectures, new releases of the encoder will enable real-time 8Kp60 encoding andhigher compression eﬃciency.
Using an objective quality criterion based on VMAF and informal subjective tests, therecommended range of bitrates for the target live applications have been determined.
4Kp60 live encoding at broadcast-grade quality can be achieved with 13 to 14 Mbps
compared to 16 to 17 Mbps needed by Spin Digital’s HEVC real-time encoder. For
8Kp60 live applications the recommended bitrate with the new VVC encoder is 40
Mbps instead of the 50 Mbps required by the optimized HEVC encoder.
Spin Digital’s VVC encoder has been integrated into a live streaming framework that
includes all the required components for live applications such as: input capture via SDI
and TS over IP (TSoIP), pre-processing, pre-analysis, audio and video encoding,advanced rate control, and HTTP streaming and TSoIP broadcasting.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

2.

Page 4 of 49

INTRODUCTION: TRENDS IN LIVE MEDIA APPLICATIONSVideo traﬃc accounts for about 80% of the total share of Internet data traﬃc and nearly
20% of Internet video traﬃc is already live (Cisco 2018). And it will continue to grow.
OTT live and on-demand services are becoming increasingly popular, forcing traditional
TV broadcasters to also use the open Internet to boost viewership (Careless 2021)(SES 2022). In addition to professional created content, User-Generated Content (UGC)
is being live-streamed on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, generating
signiﬁcantly higher engagement rates (Bern 2019). Other live applications including
e-gaming and video surveillance are also experiencing huge Internet traﬃc growth(Cisco 2018). The Covid-19 pandemic has also changed the way in which people areinteracting in private and professional life: there are more and more video conferencing
sessions as well as more live events online. And these trends do not seem to change inthe post-pandemic scenario (Wyman 2021).
The next generation of live applications is primarily focused on delivering higher quality
video as well as immersive experiences that engage the end user more with thecontent. The 4K Ultra-High Deﬁnition (UHD) High Dynamic Range (HDR) format is
becoming mainstream, 8K UHD streaming and broadcasting is already a reality, and 8K
360-/180-degree video is an accepted format for high-end live Virtual Reality (VR)streaming applications.
For these emerging live services, High Eﬃciency Video Coding (HEVC) represents thestate-of-the-art codec for compressing video with lower data rates without sacriﬁcing
quality (Spin Digital 2020, Ultra HD Forum 2021). However, HEVC is reaching its
maximum compression eﬃciency capacity. As a result, next-generation codecs areneeded to make these enhanced applications more accessible.
Versatile Video Coding (VVC), or H.266, is the latest video coding standard that not only
provides signiﬁcantly higher compression eﬃciency than HEVC, but is also designed toenable eﬃcient coding of different types of video, such as UHDTV (4K and 8K),
VR/360-degree, and screen content. VVC also includes tools for more eﬃcientencoding for adaptive bitrate streaming and scalable encoding. VVC coding solutions,especially for live streaming and broadcasting, will be essential in the near future tofacilitate the development of next-generation multimedia applications.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

3.

Page 5 of 49

THE VVC/H.266 STANDARD AND ITS APPLICATIONSThe VVC/H.266 standard was completed in July 2020 by the Joint Video Experts Team(JVET) of ISO and ITU (Bross et al. 2020). VVC represents the state-of-the-art in videocoding providing 50% bitrate reduction with respect to its predecessor, HEVC/H.265, forthe same visual quality. This level of compression gain is only possible at the expenseof signiﬁcant computational increase.
In the currently fragmented codec landscape, VVC competes with other coding
standards including AV1 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), Low Complexity
Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC) and Essential Video Coding (EVC) by MPEG.
Independent evaluations have shown that VVC can achieve higher compression
eﬃciency than these other standards: e.g. 19.5% to 20.5% better than AV1 and 27.3% to30.5% better than EVC for UHD video (Grois et al. 2021).
VVC not only produces higher compression than other standards, but is also designed
to achieve more eﬃcient coding of different types of content (footage, screen content,
and 360-degree video) and new-generation video formats including UHD 4K and 8K
with HDR and wide color gamut.

3.1.

VVC TARGET APPLICATIONSThe VVC standard has been designed to make possible next-generation video
applications. With VVC high-end 8K live and on-demand services can become more
popular, since high-quality 8K content can be transmitted over bandwidth-constrained
networks such as terrestrial broadcasting and streaming over the Internet. 4K HDR
premium content can also be delivered to more users and with lower streaming costs.
Even Full HD can become the new standard resolution with high quality and very low
bitrates.
In addition, VVC includes new features to make Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming
services more eﬃcient in compression, as well as to enhance the immersive
experience of VR events in 360/180-degree formats. VVC also includes scalability, acoding technique to compress video in multiple layers, each layer representing a
different resolution or quality of the same video. Thus, video services can be deployedwith scalability enabled in order to support networks, receivers and display devices withdifferent capabilities. Unlike the scalable extensions of other codecs, this feature has
been simpliﬁed and made more practical for easier deployment.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

3.2.

Page 6 of 49

VVC FOR LIVE

Currently, HEVC is the state-of-the-art video codec for UHD live applications. Existing
codec implementations already achieve the performance required to transmit 4K and
8K video live over the Internet as well as broadcast channels. Using latest-generation
HEVC real-time encoders, the recommended bitrates to produce broadcast-grade
quality 4Kp60 video range from 15 to 18 Mbps (Schwarz 2022) and for 8Kp60 from 48
to 80 Mbps (Schwarz 2 2022). However, these encoding solutions have reached a pointof diminishing returns for HEVC under real-time conditions, meaning that adding morecomputation will result in marginal compression gains.
In order to reduce the bandwidth beyond the capabilities of HEVC and, in this way, make
UHD live services more accessible to the public, a new-generation codec is needed as it
includes more eﬃcient coding tools and features. Figure 1 shows a comparison ofstate-of-the-art performance optimized encoding implementations of AVC, HEVC, AV1,
and VVC for 4K-UHD video in terms of compression eﬃciency and encoding
complexity. Compression eﬃciency is measured as bitrate increase at equal quality
referred to a baseline encoder, and encoding complexity is calculated as CPU utilization
time relative to that of a baseline encoder. These implementations generate different
trade-offs between compression eﬃciency and complexity, adding more computation
resulting in higher compression eﬃciency (lower bitrate for the same quality). With abitrate increase of 0.0% and CPU time of 1.0x, the baseline encoder is based on HEVC
with a conﬁguration that represents the best operational point for real-time
applications.

Figure 1: Video codecs (AVC, HEVC, AV1, and VVC) compression eﬃciency capabilities andencoding complexity. When a video codec reaches a point of diminishing returns the next
generation codec offers the path for further compression gains.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 7 of 49

The ﬁgure illustrates how different generations of optimized encoders evolve from low
complexity (i.e. AVC) to very high complexity (i.e. VVC) and how they can translate thiscomplexity into compression eﬃciency. The baseline HEVC encoder is able to process
4Kp60 video in real time, and with the same computational complexity has a muchhigher compression eﬃciency than AVC/H.264. But beyond a relative complexity of
1.5x HEVC and AVC are no longer able to signiﬁcantly increase compression eﬃciency.
In contrast, AV1 and especially VVC implementations are able to signiﬁcantly overcome
the compression limits of HEVC at very high complexity. Finally, from a complexity
higher than 25.0x, it is observed that VVC increases its compression eﬃciency
advantage compared to AV1.

3.3.

VVC ENCODERS: VOD VS LIVEAs seen in Figure 1, current performance optimized encoder implementations cover awide range of encoding complexity, but it will be the requirements of the applicationthat determine in which region the encoder should operate. Thus, two types of
encoders can be distinguished: oﬄine encoders and real-time encoders. On the one
hand, this ﬁrst category is addressed to VoD applications or post-production workﬂows
where the main requirement is to reduce the bitrate as much as possible and, at thesame time, achieve high video quality, even if this results in long encoding times. Figure
1 shows that an optimized VVC encoder is able to achieve up to 50% bitrate reduction
compared to the baseline HEVC live encoder, but at the cost of 50 times thecomputational complexity.
On the other hand, the second category of encoders is used in streaming andbroadcast applications that require real-time video encoding. The main challenge forthese encoders is, therefore, to achieve the highest possible compression eﬃciency
under real-time conditions. According to the results shown in Figure 1, the relativecomplexity region in which an optimized encoder can potentially compress UHD video(e.g. 4K at 60 fps) in real-time with current CPU-based computing architectures is
between 1.0x to 2.5x the complexity of a highly optimized HEVC encoder. Theseestimations indicate that an optimized VVC live encoder can achieve around 20.0%
bitrate reduction at the cost of 2.5x more computation compared to the HEVC baseline.
AV1, at the same complexity level (2.5x compared to the HEVC baseline), has acompression eﬃciency between HEVC and VVC, with a maximum of 12.0% bitratesavings.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

4.

Page 8 of 49

SPIN DIGITAL’S VVC REAL-TIME ENCODER

Spin Digital has developed the ﬁrst version of a high-quality and performance-optimized
VVC software encoder for UHD HDR live broadcast and streaming. The encoder has
been extensively optimized for latest-generation CPU architectures in order to achieve
the performance and compression levels required for 4K and 8K video, with
optimizations including advanced coding-tool decision algorithms, SIMD processing,memory optimizations, and a multi-level parallelization approach that is able to scale tosystems with large numbers of CPU cores. With all these optimizations together, the
new encoder enables real-time encoding of 4K at 60 fps and 8K at 30 fps video in 10-bit
HDR using a dual-socket server with a total of 76 CPU cores.

Figure 2: Key components of Spin Digital’s VVC live encoder diagram

In addition to having developed an optimized core encoding module, the VVC encoder
has been integrated into a complete live streaming framework that includes (see Figure2): input capture with both SDI and IP interfaces, pre-processing (scaling, color
conversion, tone mapping), pre-analysis, advanced rate control, core VVC encoding,audio encoding, and streaming for HTTP (HLS, DASH) or TSoIP delivery (UDP, RTP, SRT,
RIST Zixi).

5.

ENCODER ASSESSMENT FOR 4K-UHD STREAMING AND
BROADCASTING

The new Spin Digital VVC real-time encoder was assessed in terms of compression
eﬃciency, encoding complexity, and multithreaded encoding speed. The results werealso compared to ﬁve open-source optimized software encoder implementations ofdifferent coding standards including H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1, and VVC/H.266.
The encoders were conﬁgured assuming a 4K-UHD live streaming and broadcasting
scenario. This use case mainly requires that the rate control is enabled and that longGroup-of-Picture (GOP) structures are used for maximum compression eﬃciency withfrequent random access points (e.g. 1 to 3 seconds intra period).

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 9 of 49

A wide set of test video sequences have been selected that are representative of
4K-UHDTV content as well as long enough to stabilize the rate control.

5.1.

VIDEO SEQUENCES

A total of 11 1-minute 4K video sequences representing the target use case wereselected in these experiments. The test set includes camera footage, animation andvideos with visual effects in order to analyze the quality impact of the encoders onheterogeneous textures and motion.
The video sequences were acquired from different providers including: Netﬂix (Xiph2015, Netﬂix 2022), Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC)(Immersify 2018), Fraunhofer HHI and InterDigital (Fraunhofer HHI, InterDigital 2022),
and Unigine (Unigine 2017). The master ﬁles were preprocessed using Spin Digital’s
high-precision ﬁlters to generate a 4K-UHD broadcast distribution format, which is
speciﬁed in the table below. The preprocessing operations applied to each sequence
are described in Appendix.

Table 1: Technical speciﬁcations of the 4K-UHD distribution format
Parameters

4K-UHD distribution format

Resolution

3840x2160 pixels

Frame rate

24, 59.94, 60 fps

Chroma sampling

4:2:0

Bit-depth

10 bits

Transfer function and color gamut

SDR: SDR, BT.709
HDR: PQ, BT.2020

Table 2 presents detailed information of the test sequences: producer, type of content,
HDR and color gamut formats, and Spatial Information (SI) and Temporal Information(TI) (ITU-R 2019). As can be observed, seven clips are in High Dynamic Range (HDR) PQ
with a BT.2020 color gamut, whereas the remaining four are in SDR BT.709. The
obtained SI and TI values cover a wide spectrum of complexities, from low (Meridian,RollerCoaster) to high (SolLevante, TunnelFlag) SI and TI, demonstrating theheterogeneity in complexity of the selected sequences (see Figure 3).

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 10 of 49

Table 2: Technical information of the test sequences: producer, type of content, format, SI, TI
ProducerBasketballGame

NetﬂixType

FormatSI

TI

Footage 4Kp59.94 HDR

112.6 (med)152.2 (med)Footage

4Kp60 HDR

172.2 (med)63.6 (low)BerlinSeqs

Fraunh. HHI &InterDigital

DrivingPOVNetﬂixFootage 4Kp59.94 HDR

150.0 (med)147.4 (med)FollowCar

PSNC

Footage 4Kp59.94 SDR

201.9 (high)111.8 (med)

MC2

PSNC

Footage 4Kp59.94 SDR

280.5 (high)82.5 (low)MeridianNetﬂix Footage & CGI 4Kp59.94 HDR

89.8 (low)23.6 (low)RollerCoasterNetﬂix92.3 (low)84.9 (low)SolLevanteNetﬂixAnimation

4Kp24 HDR

237.5 (high)269.4 (high)Superposition

UnigineCGI

4Kp60 SDR

226.5 (high)82.9 (low)ToddlerFountainNetﬂixFootage 4Kp59.94 HDR

170.2 (med)79.3 (low)TunnelFlag

NetﬂixFootage 4Kp59.94 SDR

211.6 (high)

206.8 (high)Footage 4Kp59.94 HDR

Figure 3: Spatial and Temporal Perceptual Information of the test sequences

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

5.2.

Page 11 of 49

VIDEO ENCODERSTable 3 shows, for each encoder, the standard on which it is based, the company or
institution that develops it, and the version and release date used in the experiments.

Table 3: Coding standard, company, version, and release date for each encoder underassessment
x264

x265

SVT-HEVC

Spin
DigitalHEVC

SVT-AV1

VVenC

Spin
Digital
VVC

AVC

HEVC

HEVC

HEVC

AV1

VVC

VVC

Company VideoLAN Multicore
Ware

Intel

Spin Digital

Intel &
Netﬂix

Version

1.5.1

1.2

1.0.0

Standard

Release
date

r3075

3.5

Fraunhofer
Spin Digital
HHI
1.3.1

0.1

Sep. 2021 Mar. 2021 June 2021 June 2022 Apr. 2022 Dec. 2021 June 2022

The table speciﬁes one AVC/H.264 encoder (x264), three implementations of the HEVC
standard (x265, SVT-HEVC, Spin Digital HEVC), one AV1 encoder (SVT-AV1), and two
VVC encoders (VVenC and Spin Digital VVC). Spin Digital’s HEVC encoder is part of acommercially available product called Spin Enc Live (Spin Digital 2022). For the sake ofclarity, from now on this encoder will be called Spin Digital HEVC.

5.3.

ENCODING SETTINGS

The video encoders were conﬁgured as similarly as possible assuming the 4K-UHD
broadcast scenario. This use case typically requires random-access encoding mode
(long GOP), open GOP, 1-second intra period, and Constant Bit Rate (CBR) rate control
with a 1-second buffer size for the Hypothetical Reference Decoder (HRD) model. Some
exceptions to this typical conﬁguration are: the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) algorithm of
SVT-AV1 was selected, since the CBR method is not supported in random-accessmode; and the rate control mechanism of VVenC does not support the HRD constraint.
In addition, the encoders were tuned to maximize the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR). Other parameters, such as GOP size, GOP structure, and lookahead window
were kept at their default values.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 12 of 49

The target bitrates were selected based on the recommendations given by the Ultra HD
Forum for 4K HEVC ﬁnal distribution (Ultra HD Forum 2021). In particular, forcompression eﬃciency (BD-rate) analysis a range between 8 and 44 Mbps in steps of 4
Mbps was used. This range is wide enough to accurately compare different generationsof encoders.
For each encoder several presets were used in order to analyze different tradeoffs
between quality and speed. Spin Digital's HEVC and VVC encoders were evaluated onlywith the recommended preset for the intended use case.
For the sake of a fair comparison, the number of encoding threads was set to 8 in all
encoders. An analysis of maximum encoding speed when using a high-performance
multi-core CPU is presented later in this report.

5.4.

COMPARISON METRICS

The video encoders were compared from the compression eﬃciency, encoding
complexity, and performance points of view using BD-rate, CPU time and the encoding
speed in frames per second, respectively.

Compression eﬃciency: BD-rate
The Bjontegaard Delta (BD)-rate method (Bjøntegaard 2001, Bjøntegaard 2008) wasused to compute compression eﬃciency. Its goal is to compute the average bitrateincrease produced by a test encoder referred to a baseline encoder at the same quality
Spin Digital’s HEVC real-time encoder - Spin Digital HEVC - was selected as the baseline
encoder. Four quality metrics used in the experiments were: PSNR, Perceptually
Weighted PSNR (XPSNR) (Helmrich et al. 2020, Helmrich 2021), Multi-Scale Structural
Similarity (MS-SSIM) (Wang, Simoncelli, and Bovik 2003), and Video Multi-method
Assessment Function (VMAF) (Netﬂix 2021). The PSNR, XPSNR, and MS-SSIM metrics
were calculated using the luma and chroma components.

Encoding complexity: CPU time
Encoding complexity was measured in terms of average CPU utilization time (including
both user-level and system-level CPU utilization) over the target bitrates during theencoding process, relative to a reference encoder. Note that the CPU time is theaccumulated time across all cores of the CPU, and therefore it can also be seen as
single-threaded encoding time. Spin Digital HEVC has been used as a reference.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 13 of 49

The platform used to run the encodings and quality metrics for BD-rate and CPU timecomputation is a server with the following components:
●
●
●

CPU:
DRAM:
OS:

4x Intel Xeon Platinum 8176 CPU @ 2.10GHz (4x 28 cores)
24x 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
Ubuntu 20.04

Encoding jobs were executed in parallel using the parallel job scheduling framework
called parallel (Tange 2018).

Maximum performance: multithreaded encoding speed
The maximum performance of the encoders was measured in terms of multithreaded
encoding speed. This measurement allowed us to determine the maximum number offrames per second produced by the encoders running on a latest-generation multi-core
platform.
In order to achieve maximum performance it is not only important that the encoder ishighly optimized for single-threading, but also that the multithreading parallelism is welldesigned and implemented in order to use the platform resources eﬃciently. To
measure this ability we have also recorded the CPU utilization during the encoding
process.
To measure encoding speed, the value provided by the encoding applications was
taken instead of using the elapsed time facilitated by the linux time command, as theformer measures the performance devoted to encoding only, excluding the time
consumed for memory allocation and other initialization steps at the beginning of theencoding.
The server speciﬁcations used to measure the speed performance of the encoders arelisted below:
●
●
●

CPU:
DRAM:
OS:

Intel Xeon Platinum 8368@ 2.4 GHz (2x 38 cores)
16x 16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz
Red Hat 8.5

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

5.5.

Page 14 of 49

COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY AND ENCODING COMPLEXITY

Table 4 and Figures 4 to 7 show the complete results produced by the encoders understudy in terms of BD-rate based on PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM, and VMAF, and CPU time,in which the reference is Spin Digital HEVC.

Table 4: Results in terms of BD-rate based on different quality metrics (PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM,
VMAF) and CPU time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for the encoders and presets underevaluation. The bitrate range for BD-rate calculation is from 8 Mbps to 44 Mbps
Encoder - preset

PSNR
BD-rate [%]XPSNRBD-rate [%]MS-SSIM
BD-rate [%]VMAF
BD-rate [%]CPU Time[times]x264 r3075 - slower

32.44

53.24

47.13

16.35

4.08

x264 r3075 - med

46.00

69.80

61.59

22.91

1.37

x264 r3075- vfast

100.29156.16112.24

80.48

0.73

x265 v3.5 - slower-13.32-10.66-6.75-23.6525.55

x265 v3.5 - medium

4.08

7.21

10.67

4.71

2.95

x265 v3.5 - ultrafast

52.08

57.46

53.38

43.82

0.86

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 3

15.05

16.05

25.91

34.64

5.83

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 5

32.77

33.64

54.95

54.71

1.94

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 7

43.88

44.21

60.92

71.12

1.08

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 9

66.30

66.78

77.34

102.76

0.76

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 11

100.69103.19101.52134.83

0.60

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 4-31.50-33.51-30.58-32.46

24.70

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 6-23.78-25.47-23.74-28.92

6.65

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 7-16.00-17.26-16.01-20.52

3.99

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 8-9.36-10.61-11.32

-4.68

2.16

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 9

-1.24

-3.72

-4.12

-0.08

1.43

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 10

16.28

16.94

9.36

14.72

0.87

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 12

44.58

46.73

32.26

30.36

0.57

VVenC v1.3.1 - fast

-37.73-41.54-32.87-36.85

26.00

VVenC v1.3.1 - faster-31.14-34.22-24.48-27.78

15.12

Spin Digital HEVC v1.2

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.00

Spin Digital VVC v0.1

-16.57-17.01-17.37-18.11

1.98

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 15 of 49

Figure 4: PSNR BD-Rate and CPU utilization time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for the encoders
and presets under evaluation

Figure 5: XPSNR BD-Rate and CPU utilization time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for the encoders
and presets under evaluation

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 16 of 49

Figure 6: MS-SSIM BD-Rate and CPU utilization time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for theencoders and presets under evaluation

Figure 7: VMAF BD-Rate and CPU utilization time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for the encoders
and presets under evaluation

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 17 of 49

When compared to an optimized HEVC encoder, Spin Digital’s
VVC encoder produces bitrate savings of 18% at twice thecomputational complexity and, at the same complexity,
outperforms SVT-AV1 (preset 8).

As can be seen in the table and ﬁgures, at a CPU utilization time of 2.0x, Spin Digital
VVC produces the highest compression eﬃciency of all encoders, with bitrate savings
over Spin Digital HEVC ranging from 16.57% to 18.11%, depending on the quality metricused. With similar complexity, Spin Digital VVC achieves higher BD-rate gains than
SVT-AV1 - 8, for example: -16.57% vs -9.36% (PSNR) or -18.11% vs -4.68% (VMAF).
Moreover, it is observed that the bitrate savings achieved by Spin Digital VVC arecomparable to those of SVT-AV1 - 7 and x265 - slower, but those encoding modes
require 2.0 times and 12.5 times more computation, respectively.

At a comparable compression eﬃciency, Spin Digital VVC is half
as complex as SVT-AV1 (preset 7) and signiﬁcantly lesscomplex than x265 (preset slower).

Table 5 reports the results in terms of BD-rate and CPU time for a narrower range ofbitrates between 6 Mbps and 25 Mbps, which can be considered more realistic for 4K
VVC or AV1 video. For the sake of simplicity, the results correspond to Spin Digital’s
HEVC and VVC encoders, SVT-AV1 - 8, and VVenC - faster.
Table 5: Results in terms of BD-rate based on different quality metrics (PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM,
VMAF) and CPU time relative to Spin Digital HEVC for selected encoders and presets underevaluation. The bitrate range for BD-rate calculation is 6 Mbps to 25 Mbps
Encoder - preset

PSNR
BD-rate [%]XPSNRBD-rate [%]MS-SSIM
BD-rate [%]VMAF
BD-rate [%]CPU Time[times]SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 8-11.07-13.13-13.62

-7.99

2.22

VVenC v1.3.1 - faster-31.67-34.24-27.50-29.38

14.65

Spin Digital HEVC v1.2

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.00

Spin Digital VVC v0.1

-16.33-16.70-17.89-16.58

1.87

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 18 of 49

As can be seen, the results for Spin Digital VVC when using a range between 6 Mbps
and 25 Mbps are similar to the results obtained using a larger range of bitrates (8 Mbps
to 44 Mbps), which was needed for comparing multiple codec generations. Althoughslightly higher BD-rate gains are observed for SVT-AV1 - 8, and also for VVenC - faster,in this narrower range, Spin Digital VVC still achieves the highest compression gain at acomparable CPU time.

5.6.

COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY PER SEQUENCE

Table 6 provides more detailed information about the BD-rate savings obtained by the
new VVC encoder when compared to the HEVC baseline. According to these results,
Spin Digital’s VVC encoder achieves an average bitrate reduction of 16.57% for thesame PSNR, ranging from 11.96% to 26.97%, for twice the complexity of Spin Digital
HEVC. If the VMAF metric is used, the VVC encoder achieves an 18% bitrate reduction,
going from 8.88% to 33.65%. Other metrics exhibit similar compression gains.
Table 6: BD-rate results for each video sequence achieved by Spin Digital VVC referred to Spin
Digital HEVC
Video Sequence

PSNR BD-rate[%]

BasketballGame-15.89-16.40-14.58-15.42

BerlinSeqs-11.96-12.06-12.28-15.67

DrivingPOV-17.83-18.58-17.91-18.70

FollowCar-26.97-26.83-26.70-24.08MC2-12.22-13.29-15.84-11.97

Meridian-12.66-13.62-14.73-18.75

RollerCoaster-16.96-17.56-15.78-16.85

SolLevante-13.80-14.75-14.62-13.90Superposition-18.62-18.91-19.51-33.65ToddlerFountain-12.48-12.42-13.74-8.88

TunnelFlag-21.55-21.41-24.10-18.47

Average-16.57-17.01-17.37-18.11

5.7.

XPSNR BD-rate MS-SSIM BD-rate[%][%]

VMAF BD-rate[%]

SELECTED QUALITY-BITRATE PLOTS

Unlike the BD-rate metric, which gives a single number representing the compression
eﬃciency of an encoder in average over a range of bitrates, the quality-bitrate(rate-distortion) curves provide a better insight of the compression eﬃciency of theencoders for different bitrates.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 19 of 49

The following ﬁgures show the quality-bitrate curves based on PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM,
and VMAF for the DrivingPOV sequence. In order to reduce the number of encoders andpresets displayed, only those that produce comparable complexities around 2.0x (from1.0x to 3.0x) were included: x264 - medium, x265 - medium, SVT-HEVC - 5, SVT-AV1 - 8,
Spin Digital HEVC, and Spin Digital VVC. Although VVenC has no preset falling in thespeciﬁed range of complexity, VVenC - faster has also been included as a reference of
VVC’s potential in terms of compression eﬃciency.
As can be observed, VVenC - faster achieves in general the highest quality at equal
bitrate –but at the cost of 15 times higher complexity– followed by Spin Digital VVC
and then by SVT-AV1 - 8.

Figure 8: PSNR-bitrate curves for DrivingPOV

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 20 of 49

Figure 9: XPSNR-bitrate curves for DrivingPOV

Figure 10: MS-SSIM-bitrate curves for DrivingPOV

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 21 of 49

Figure 11: VMAF-bitrate curves for DrivingPOV

5.8.

MULTITHREADED ENCODING SPEED

The performance of the encoders for 4K UHD 10-bit video was measured on a high-end
server with two Intel Xeon Platinum 8368 CPUs (2x 38 cores). DrivingPOV was used inthese experiments, being the most diﬃcult sequence in the test set from an encoding
speed point of view.
The criterion chosen to conﬁgure the encoders for performance tests was to select thebitrate such that a constant quality is achieved. A target VMAF score of 95 was chosen
to produce a very high quality that in turn results in a suﬃciently high bitrate forbenchmark purposes.
The video encoders were also conﬁgured to enable the maximum number of threads
for the target server. In order to reduce the impact of uncompressed input YUV ﬁle disk
reading and output bitstream writing, the encoders were conﬁgured to use fast ﬁle readmodes or encoding from memory and not to write the resulting bitstreams to the disk.
Table 7 shows the obtained performance results for each encoder and preset. In
addition it includes the actual bitrate that produces a VMAF score of 95 and the overall
CPU utilization in CPU cores. The system has a maximum of 76 CPU cores each one
with 2-way Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), also known as HyperThreading, for atheoretical maximum of 152 cores. Figure 12 shows the bitrate and encoding speed
generated by all the encoders.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 22 of 49

Table 7: Performance results corresponding to DrivingPOV generated by the encoders andpresets in terms of actual bitrate for a VMAF of 95, encoding speed, and CPU utilization
Encoder - preset

Bitrate[Mbps]

Encoding speed[fps]

Encoding time
[spf]

CPU utilization[CPU cores]

x264 r3075 - slower

18.50

21.00

0.048

27.02

x264 r3075 - med

20.00

58.28

0.017

31.37

x264 r3075 - vfast

31.60

80.26

0.012

27.04

x265 v3.5 - slower

12.29

2.72

0.368

23.12

x265 v3.5 - medium

17.01

19.46

0.051

22.92

x265 v3.5 - ultrafast

19.01

63.44

0.016

28.38

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 3

17.39

27.49

0.036

144.60SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 5

19.08

79.42

0.013

126.97

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 7

20.89

115.31

0.009

66.45

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 9

29.48

133.20

0.008

44.18

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 11

34.98

146.54

0.007

31.34

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 4

10.26

3.81

0.262

31.88

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 6

10.36

14.20

0.070

40.98

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 7

10.99

21.80

0.046

37.02

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 8

13.38

37.35

0.026

37.2

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 9

14.76

57.55

0.017

41.69

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 10

16.43

82.38

0.012

33.25

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 1218.31

118.98

0.008

31.6

VVenC v1.3.1- fast

9.07

1.94

0.515

15.10

VVenC v1.3.1 - faster

10.37

2.77

0.361

14.11

Spin Digital HEVC v1.2

15.90

169.01

0.006

69.29

Spin Digital VVC v0.1

12.94

96.17

0.010

76.85

According to these results, the HEVC and VVC real-time encoders developed by Spin
Digital are able to achieve a performance beyond real-time (60 fps) and, at the sametime, produce the lowest bitrates under real-time conditions. The HEVC and VVC
encoders run, respectively, at 169 fps and 96 fps producing average bitrates of 15.90
Mbps and 12.94 Mbps. Except VVenC, which is not designed for live applications, therest of encoders require very fast presets to reach encoding speeds above 60 fps, but
at the expense of a noticeable increase in the bitrate for achieving the same quality.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 23 of 49

Figure 12: Actual bitrate for a VMAF of 95 and encoding speed produced by the encoders andpresets when encoding DrivingPOV using two Intel Xeon Platinum 8368 CPUs (2x 38 cores)

Spin Digital’s VVC encoder achieves a performance beyond
real-time video and, at the same time, produces the lowest
bitrate for a given target quality under real-time conditions.

It is also noteworthy that the complexity when running at maximum speed in a
multicore system is very different from the single-threaded complexity reported inTable 4. In particular, it can be noticed that the parallel processing performance of
SVT-AV1 is less eﬃcient than that of Spin Digital VVC. Although in single threading
Spin Digital VVC and SVT-AV1 - 8 have similar complexity, in multithreading SVT-AV1 - 8
is 2.5 to 3.0 times slower than Spin Digital VVC. In order to achieve real-time
performance for 4Kp60 video, SVT-AV1 requires preset 10 which results in a higher
bitrate than Spin Digital VVC (27% higher for DrivingPOV) for the same VMAF quality.
It is also observed in Table 7 that SVT-HEVC and Spin Digital’s HEVC and VVC encoders
are the ones that make the best use of CPU resources, which explains their very highencoding speed. The lower CPU utilization achieved by the other encoders (e.g. up to
47 CPU cores for SVT-AV1) indicates that their parallel architectures are noticeably lesseﬃcient than those implemented in the Spin Digital’s encoders.
Note that these performance results have been obtained considering a quality criterion

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 24 of 49

based on VMAF. In order to verify that the selected bitrates are also representative forhigh-quality video measured with other metrics, the PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM, and VMAF
scores generated by each encoder and preset are reported in Table 8.
As can be seen, the selected bitrates generate a VMAF score of around 95, MS-SSIM
values between 0.985 and 0.988, and PSNR and XPSNR values exceeding 40.9 dB up to
41.7 dB. Although a non-negligible variation is observed in PSNR (and XPSNR), at thesehigh quality levels, the differences in distortion are assumed to be not signiﬁcant inperceptual terms. Therefore, constant visual quality can be assumed. A more detailed
objective and subjective validation is beyond the scope of this paper. The results
obtained in terms of bitrate and encoding performance are conclusive for the purposesof comparing different encoders.
Table 8: PSNR, XPSNR, MS-SSIM, and VMAF scores produced by the encoders and presets
under assessment when encoding DrivingPOV at the selected bitrates
Encoder - preset

Bitrate[Mbps]

PSNR
[dB]

XPSNR
[dB]

MS-SSIM[0-1]

VMAF[0-100]x264 r3075 - slower

27.52

40.70

40.57

0.984

94.30

x264 r3075 - med

30.06

40.73

40.57

0.984

94.34

x264 r3075- vfast

43.09

41.24

40.89

0.986

94.90

x265 v3.5 - slower

17.23

41.01

40.93

0.985

95.00

x265 v3.5 - medium

24.02

41.28

41.17

0.986

95.04

x265 v3.5 - ultrafast

36.15

41.14

41.06

0.986

95.03

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 3

29.98

41.41

41.39

0.987

94.73

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 5

40.04

41.52

41.48

0.987

94.91

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 7

46.02

41.59

41.54

0.988

95.00

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 9

57.02

41.73

41.67

0.988

95.00

SVT-HEVC v1.5.1 - 11

69.07

41.68

41.63

0.988

95.03

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 4

16.44

41.30

41.38

0.987

95.03

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 6

17.11

41.13

41.22

0.986

95.02

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 7

21.04

41.14

41.21

0.986

95.03

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 8

24.97

41.44

41.46

0.987

95.01

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 9

23.83

41.41

41.46

0.987

95.02

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 10

25.69

41.34

41.34

0.987

95.07

SVT-AV1 v1.0.0 - 12

32.83

41.16

41.15

0.986

95.01

VVenC v1.3.1 - fast

11.85

41.28

41.49

0.987

94.96

VVenC v1.3.1 - faster

15.65

41.32

41.42

0.987

94.92

Spin Digital HEVC v1.2

19.65

41.39

41.45

0.987

94.99

Spin Digital VVC v0.1

14.90

41.35

41.43

0.987

94.96

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

6.

Page 25 of 49

RECOMMENDED BITRATE FOR 4K LIVE VIDEO

For creating new generation streaming services based on VVC it is fundamental toestimate a recommended bitrate. This depends on several factors such as:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Resolution and frame rate: 1080p, 4K-UHD, 8K-UHD, and 25/30 or 50/60 fps
Coding standard: AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, AV1, VVC/H.266
Video encoder implementation
Use case: oﬄine (VoD), live (live OTT, broadcasting)Type of content: TV studio, TV series, live sports, UGC, gaming, screen content
A quality criterion, which can be based on an objective metric (e.g. PSNR,
VMAF) or a subjective experiment (e.g. MOS).

This section aims to answer this open question for the use case of UHD-TV (4Kp60
10-bit HDR) live applications using two state-of-the-art real-time encoders: Spin Digital
HEVC and Spin Digital VVC.
The video sequences are those described in Section 5.1, which can be considered
representative for this use case as they encompass different types of content and awide range of spatio-temporal complexities. In addition, 9 more 4K video footage havebeen added to this analysis: Aerial, DinnerScene and WindNature (Netﬂix 2022), and 6
excerpts of The Explorers nature content (The Explorers 2021). In all, the set of videos
to determine the recommended range is composed of 20 1-minute clips.
VMAF-based criterion
The quality criterion selected is based on the VMAF metric, as follows. The
recommended bitrate is the one that results in 1) a minimum VMAF score of 90 for
most of the test video sequences (i.e. 75% of all sequences in the test set) and, 2) a
minimum VMAF score of 70 for any test video sequence (see Table 9).
Table 9: VMAF-based quality criterion to determine the recommended bitrate for a video
encoder
VMAF score

Equivalent MOS

Quality description

Percentage of videos

≥90

≥4.5

“good” - “excellent”

≥75%

≥70

≥3.5

“fair” - “good”

100%

VMAF 90 corresponds to a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of around 4.5 (between “good”
and “excellent” quality) and VMAF 70 to a MOS of 3.5 (between “fair” and “good”
quality) (Li et al. 2018). This criterion is based on a similar recommendation for 8K
HEVC content to achieve broadcast-grade video quality by NHK TSRL (Ichigaya andNishida 2016). The ﬁrst condition guarantees high quality of service in most cases,
while the second ensures that highly complex videos are still viewed with acceptable
quality.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 26 of 49

Figure 14: VMAF-bitrate curves produced by Spin Digital HEVC and recommended range ofbitratesFigure 15: VMAF-bitrate curves produced by Spin Digital VVC and recommended range ofbitrates

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 27 of 49

Figures 14 and 15 show the VMAF-bitrate curves generated by the HEVC and VVC
real-time encoders, respectively. The ﬁgures illustrate in lightgray the regions where thequality criterion of Table 9 is met for both encoders. As can be seen, the VMAF-based
criterion for high-quality 4K live video with Spin Digital HEVC is met at 16-17 Mbps,
whereas the bitrate recommendation using Spin Digital VVC can go down to 13-14
Mbps.

The recommended bitrate range for 4Kp60 live applications
with Spin Digital VVC goes from 13 to 14 Mbps, a signiﬁcantreduction from the 16 to 17 Mbps required by Spin Digital HEVC

The sequence that produces the lowest quality score is ToddlerFountain. Since thisvideo mostly contains water jets and splashes, Spin Digital HEVC - as well as the otherencoders under evaluation - need to allocate many bits to this type of high-frequency
texture in order to encode it with a certain level of quality.

Subjective test
In order to verify the visual quality of the videos encoded at the recommended bitrates,
an informal subjective test was conducted by Spin Digital. The videos described in
Section 5.1 were encoded with Spin Digital HEVC at 17 Mbps as well as with Spin
Digital VVC at 14 Mbps. To conduct this test, a playback PC running Spin Digital’s
media player – Spin Player– which supports both HEVC (Spin Digital 2 2022) and VVC(Spin Digital 3 2022) was used. The videos were watched on a 4K HDR TV at a viewing
distance of about 1.5 times the height of the TV (ITU-R 2019).
According to the subjective test, the perceived quality was generally very high. The
video clips were rated as “excellent”, except BerlinSeqs (VMAF 92), SolLevante (VMAF93), and ToddlerFountain (VMAF 72-74). The ﬁrst two sequences were rated “good” to“excellent”, since the visible coding artifacts - mainly in the form of blocking effect were not perceived bothersome. ToddlerFountain, which is the most problematic clip in
the test set according to the objective metrics, was scored as “good” due to thecontinuous but not annoying blocking artifacts in the water jets and splashes.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

7.

Page 28 of 49

4K/8K VVC LIVE STREAMING AND BROADCASTING

For a video encoder to work reliably in a live streaming environment, several
requirements in terms of performance and features should be met. These requirements
are summarized next:●

High average encoding speed: The performance of the encoder should be on
average higher than the target video frame rate (e.g. 60 fps), with a suﬃcienttolerance margin so that the instantaneous speed does not fall below the target
frame rate in case of complex scenes. This requirement has been proven in theprevious section for Spin Digital VVC encoder for 4Kp60 video.

●

Stable performance over time: The encoder should also exhibit a stableencoding speed over time in order to prevent frame dropping that can degrade
the temporal continuity of the encoded video.

●

Real-time operation mode: The encoder should process the content at thetarget video resolution and frame rate, but if the content is too complex and theunderlying hardware does not have the required computing capacity, theencoder should drop input frames instead of adding encoding delay.

●

HRD compliance: The synchronization of encoders and decoders in live
applications is deﬁned by the HRD model, which speciﬁes constraints on picture
timing, buffer size and buffer handling. To ensure high-quality and smoothplayback, appropriate encoding decisions should be made to prevent buffer
overﬂows and underﬂows while providing consistent video quality over time.

●

I/O modules: The live encoder should be equipped with I/O modules that canreceive an uncompressed video and audio from the source (e.g. a camera) via
SDI or a contribution stream over IP, and deliver the compressed output stream
either over HTTP (e.g HLS, DASH) or TSoIP (e.g. UDP, RTP, SRT), or both
simultaneously.

Figure 16: 4K/8K HDR live encoding and streaming workﬂow based on Spin Digital’s VVC
encoding and playback solutions

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 29 of 49

The new VVC encoder has been integrated into a framework for live applications
designed to fulﬁll all the above requirements. Using the enhanced framework acomplete VVC live encoding, streaming, playback workﬂow has been validated for
4Kp60 and 8Kp30 HDR 10-bit video (see Figure 16). The workﬂow is composed of threecomponents:●

Uncompressed media player: A real-time software media player developed by
Spin Digital that plays uncompressed YUV video over 12G-SDI in 4K and 8K
resolutions together with PCM audio.

●

VVC real-time encoder: An encoding server with 12G-SDI video capture, VVC
video and AAC audio encoding, and HTTP and TSoIP streaming modules.

●

VVC media player: A playback PC running Spin Digital’s VVC media player,
which handles VVC and AAC decoding, video and audio rendering, and 4K and
8K video output over GPU with HDMI interface.

A series of 4Kp60 video sequences with associated audio were live encoded in VVC at
25 Mbps and streamed over a local network using two transmission protocols: HLS for
HTTP-based streaming, and RTP for TSoIP broadcast. Although 13-14 Mbit/s were
determined to be the recommended rate, 25 Mbit/s was used for this test to stress theencoder performance.
On the receiving side, the VVC media player decoded and played back thereconstructed pictures on the UHD display. The same experiment was also performed
successfully using videos in 8Kp30 10-bit format. Below are some images of thereal-time encoder and player during the test session.
This proof-of-concept demonstrates that VVC UHD live encoding and streaming is now
possible with current computing technologies and highly optimized VVC encoder anddecoder software solutions.

VVC UHD live encoding and streaming is now possible with Spin
Digital’s VVC encoder and decoder software solutions runningon current computing technologies.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 30 of 49

Figure 17: Conﬁguration of encoding parameters

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 31 of 49

Figure 18: Encoding and streaming control

Figure 19: Status tab displaying encoding statistics in real-timeHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 32 of 49

Figure 20: Live playback using Spin Player VVC

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

8.

Page 33 of 49

CONCLUSIONSIn this paper a VVC/H.266 real-time software encoder has been presented. The new
encoder is designed to produce the compression, quality, and performance levels
required for high-end UHD live streaming and broadcasting applications.
The main highlights of the VVC real-time encoder are summarized next:●

Higher compression eﬃciency than state-of-the-art HEVC live encoder: The
ﬁrst version of the VVC encoder achieves 18% bitrate savings, ranging from 9%
to 34% depending on the video content, for the same quality with respect to ahighly optimized HEVC real-time encoder. This has been possible at the cost of
2 times higher computational complexity, which is considered reasonable andhas been proven feasible with current generation of CPU architectures. The VVC
encoder has signiﬁcantly lower complexity than other VVC implementations
that require between 10 and 50 times more computation than HEVC. For 8K
video, initial results have shown that the new VVC encoder achieves 26% bitratesavings at equal quality relative to the HEVC live encoder with 1.5 times greater
complexity.

●

Real-time UHD video encoding on a single dual-socket server: The new VVC
encoder is a highly-optimized CPU-based software solution that can process 4K
video at 60 fps as well as 8K video at 30 fps both in 10-bit HDR in real-time on asingle server with two Intel Xeon Platinum processors with a total of 76 CPU
cores.

●

Outperforming optimized open-source HEVC and AV1 encoders: When runningon a multi-core CPU system targeting 4K 60 fps real-time operation, the new
VVC encoder produces the required encoding performance and results in thehighest compression eﬃciency when compared to open-source HEVC and AV1
encoders such as x265, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1.

●

Lower bandwidth for UHD live video: Using an objective quality criterion basedon VMAF and informal subjective tests, the recommended range of bitrates for
4Kp60 live applications using Spin Digital’s VVC encoder ranges from 13 to 14
Mbps, compared to 16 to 17 Mbps needed by Spin Digital’s HEVC to achieve thesame level of quality. For 8Kp60 live applications the recommended bitrate with
the new VVC encoder is 40 Mbps instead of the 50 Mbps required by the HEVC
encoder.

●

Ready for 4K/8K live streaming and broadcasting: The VVC encoder has been
integrated into a live streaming framework developed by Spin Digital that
includes: input capture via SDI and IP, pre-processing, pre-analysis, advanced
rate control, audio and video encoding, and broadcast over IP and Internet
streaming. Together with Spin Digital’s VVC decoder and media player (SpinHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 34 of 49

Player VVC), the end-to-end VVC encoding, streaming, and playback workﬂow
has been successfully validated for 4Kp60 and 8Kp30 videos.
The new VVC encoder is the ﬁrst generation of a VVC CPU-based software
implementation, and it is expected that the encoder will improve over time for delivering
UHD live video at higher quality with lower bitrates. VVC live encoding improvements
will emerge with the use of new and more advanced encoding algorithms combinedwith the performance increases of next-generation CPU architectures. As a result, it isexpected that the VVC encoder will be able to compress 8Kp60 10-bit HDR video inreal-time for live applications with increased compression and quality.

High-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 35 of 49

APPENDIX: TECHNICAL DATA SHEET OF THE TEST VIDEOSEQUENCES
This appendix presents technical information about the video sequences used forcodec comparison, including: sequence name, producer, source, content type, masterﬁle format, preprocessing operations, preprocessed ﬁle format and duration. Each tablecorresponds to a test video sequence.
Sequence

BasketballGame

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceChimera (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: TIF
Resolution: 4096x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 16 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: DCI-P3

Center cropping from 4096x2160 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 16 bits to 10 bits, DCI-P3 to BT.2020-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: from 29’25’’ to 30’25’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 36 of 49

Sequence

Berlin Sequences

ProducerFraunhofer HHI, InterDigital

Source(Fraunhofer HHI, InterDigital 2022)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Codec: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 7680x4320 pixels
Frame rate: 60 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

Downsampling from 7680x4320 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels-

Codec: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 60 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: concatenation of six 10-second clips: BodeMuseum,
NeptuneFountain2, OberbaumSpree, QuadrigaTree, SubwayTree,
TiergartenParkway

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 37 of 49

Sequence

Driving POV

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceChimera (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Codec: TIF
Resolution: 4096x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 16 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: DCI-P3

Center cropping from 4096x2160 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 16 bits to 10 bits, DCI-P3 to BT.2020-

Codec: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: from 23’00’’ to 24’00’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 38 of 49

Sequence

FollowCar

Producer

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center - Immersify
Project

Source(Immersify 2018)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: DPX
Resolution: 7680x4320 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 12 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

Downsampling from 7680x4320 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 12 bits to 10 bits-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

1 minute: from 0’00’’ to 01’00’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 39 of 49

Sequence

Karkonosze Mountains - Second clip (MC2)

Producer

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center - Immersify
Project

Source(Immersify 2018)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: DPX
Resolution: 7680x4320 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 12 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

Downsampling from 7680x4320 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 12 bits to 10 bits-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

1 minute: from 0’00’’ to 01’00’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 40 of 49

Sequence

Meridian

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceMeridian (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Footage and CGI

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: Jpeg 2000
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 16 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: P3-D65

RGB to YUV-4:2:0, 16 bits to 10 bits, P3-D65 to BT.2020-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: from 6’18’’ to 07’18’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 41 of 49

Sequence

RollerCoaster

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceChimera (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: TIF
Resolution: 4096x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 16 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: DCI-P3

Center cropping from 4096x2160 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 16 bits to 10 bits, DCI-P3 to BT.2020-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: from 9’00’’ to 10’00’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 42 of 49

Sequence

SolLevante

Producer

Netﬂix

Source

SolLevante (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Animation

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: ProRes
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 24 fps
Color model: YUV-4:4:4
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

YUV-4:4:4 to YUV-4:2:0-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 24 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

2 minutes: from 0’15’’ to 02’15’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 43 of 49

Sequence

Superposition

Producer

UnigineSource(Unigine 2017)

Type

Animation

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: ProRes
Resolution: 7680x4320 pixels
Frame rate: 60 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:2
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

Downsampling from 7680x4320 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels,
YUV-4:2:2 to YUV-4:2:0-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 60 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

1 minute: from 0’00’’ to 01’00’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 44 of 49

Sequence

ToddlerFountain

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceChimera (Netﬂix 2022)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: TIF
Resolution: 4096x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: RGB
Bit-depth: 16 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: DCI-P3

Center cropping from 4096x2160 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels, RGB
to YUV-4:2:0, 16 bits to 10 bits, DCI-P3 to BT.2020-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: PQ
Color space: BT.2020

1 minute: from 21’40’’ to 22’40’’

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

A VVC Real-time Encoder | August 2nd, 2022 | v1.0

Page 45 of 49

Sequence

TunnelFlag

Producer

Netﬂix

SourceEl Fuente (Netﬂix 2015)

Type

Footage

Master ﬁle format

Preprocessing
Preprocessed ﬁle format

Duration-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 4096x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

Center cropping from 4096x2160 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels-

Format: Uncompressed YUV
Resolution: 3840x2160 pixels
Frame rate: 59.94 fps
Color model: YUV-4:2:0
Bit-depth: 10 bits
Transfer function: SDR
Color space: BT.709

1 minute: 10-second long - concatenated 6 times

ThumbnailHigh-performance Video Codecs

REFERENCES
Bern, T. 2019. “The Socialbakers Social Media Trends Report.” Socialbakers.
https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/social-media-trends-report-key-insights-you-need-to-know.
Bjøntegaard, G. 2001. “Calculation of Average PSNR Differences between RD Curves.” Doc. VCEG-M33.
ITU-T SG16/Q6 VCEG.
Bjøntegaard, G. 2008. ““Improvements of the BD-PSNR model.” Doc. VCEG-AI11, ITU-T SG16/Q6 VCEG.
Bross, B., J. Chen, S. Liu, and Y.-K. Wang. 2020. “Versatile Video Coding (Draft 10).” Doc. JVET-S2001 of
ITU-T/ISO/IEC Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET), 19th meeting by Teleconference, (June).
Careless, J. 2021. “How Broadcasters Thrive In an OTT World.” TVTechnology.
https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/how-broadcasters-thrive-in-an-ott-world.
Cisco Systems. 2018. “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Trends, 2017–2022.” Cisco Systems
White Paper.
http://web.archive.org/web/20181213105003/https:/www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collater
al/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.pdf.
Elsevier. 2020. “OTT and live streaming services: Past, Present and Future.” Research.com.
https://research.com/special-issue/ott-and-live-streaming-services-past-present-and-future.
The Explorers. 2021. “The Earth' s ﬁrst Inventory in High-Deﬁnition (4K/8K HDR).” The Explorers Website.
https://theexplorers.com/svod.
Fraunhofer HHI, InterDigital. 2022. “Reference Sequences.” 3GPP.
https://dash-large-ﬁles.akamaized.net/WAVE/3GPP/5GVideo/ReferenceSequences/.
Grois, D., K. Giladi, K. Choi, M.W. Park, Y. Piao, M. Park, and K.P. Choi. 2021. “Performance Comparison of
Emerging EVC and VVC Video Coding Standards with HEVC and AV1.” in SMPTE Motion Imaging
Journal 130 (May): 1-12. 10.5594/JMI.2021.3065442.
Helmrich, C. 2021. “fraunhoferhhi/xpsnr: A Filter Plug-in Adding Support for Extended Perceptually
Weighted Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (XPSNR) Measurements in FFmpeg.” Fraunhofer HHI
GitHub. https://github.com/fraunhoferhhi/xpsnr.
Helmrich, C., S. Bosse, H. Schwarz, D. Marpe, and T. Wiegand. 2020. “A Study of the Extended Perceptually
Weighted Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (XPSNR) for Video Compression with Different Resolutions
and Bit-depths.” ITU Journal: ICT Discoveries Articles 3, no. 1 (May): 1-8.
10.1109/ICASSP40776.2020.9054089.
Ichigaya, A., and Y. Nishida. 2016. “Required Bit Rates Analysis for a New Broadcasting Service Using
HEVC/H.265.” IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting 62, no. 2 (June): 417-425.
10.1109/TBC.2016.2550778.
Immersify. 2018. “Content & Demos – Immersify.” Immersify Website.

https://immersify.eu/content-demos/.
ITU-R. 2019. “BT.500 : Methodologies for the Subjective Assessment of the Quality of Television Images.”
ITU Website. https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BT.500-14-201910-I/en.
Li, Z., J. Bampis, J. Novak, A. Aaron, K. Swanson, A. Moorthy, and J. De Cock. 2018. “VMAF: The JourneyContinues.” Netﬂix TechBlog.
https://netﬂixtechblog.com/vmaf-the-journey-continues-44b51ee9ed12.
Linkedin. 2022. “LinkedIn Live | Overview.” LinkedIn Business.
https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/linkedin-live.
Netﬂix. 2021. “Netﬂix/vmaf: Perceptual Video Quality Assessment Based on Multi-method Fusion.” Netﬂix
GitHub. https://github.com/Netﬂix/vmaf.
Netﬂix. 2022. “Open Source Content.” Netﬂix Open Content. https://opencontent.netﬂix.com/.
Schwarz, B. 2022. “Brazil's TV 3.0 used Ateme's Titan to Prove the Viability of its Live 8K Use Case.” 8K
Association Newsletter.
https://8kassociation.com/industry-info/8k-news/brazils-tv-3-0-used-atemes-titan-to-prove-the-vi
ability-of-its-live-8k-use-case/.
Schwarz 2, B. 2022. “Live Production 8K Video is Down to 48 Mbps With 40 Mbps Already in Spin Digital's
Sights.” 8K Association Newsletter.
https://8kassociation.com/industry-info/8k-news/live-production-8k-video-is-down-to-48-mpbs-wi
th-40-mpbs-already-in-spin-digitals-sights/.
SES. 2022. “Innovative hybrid broadcast/OTT services.” SES.
https://www.ses.com/ﬁnd-service/broadcasters/ott-broadcasters.
Spin Digital. 2020. “Whitepaper: 8K HEVC Real-time Encoder (Spin Enc Live).” Spin Digital Tech Blog.
https://spin-digital.com/tech-blog/whitepaper-spin-enc-live/.
Spin Digital. 2022. “8K HEVC Real-time Encoder (Spin Enc Live).” Spin Digital Products.
https://spin-digital.com/products/spin_enc_live/.
Spin Digital 2. 2022. “8K HEVC Media Player (Spin Player HEVC).” Spin Digital Products.
https://spin-digital.com/products/spin_player/.
Spin Digital 3. 2022. “8K VVC Media Player (Spin Player VVC).” Spin Digital Products.
https://spin-digital.com/products/spin_player_vvc/.
Tange, O. 2018. “GNU Parallel 2018.” Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/record/1146014#.Yf0NNPgo8UE.
Ultra HD Forum. 2021. “Guidelines – Ultra HD Forum.” Ultra HD Forum.
https://ultrahdforum.org/guidelines/.
Unigine. 2017. “Superposition benchmark.” UNIGINE Benchmarks.
https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition.
Wang, Z., E.P. Simoncelli, and A.C. Bovik. 2003. “Multi-scale Structural Similarity for Image Quality
Assessment.” Proceedings of the 37th EEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems andComputers 2 (November): 1398-1402. 10.1109/ACSSC.2003.1292216.
Wyman, O. 2021. “5 Reasons why Live Streaming will still be relevant after COVID.” StriveCast.
https://strivecast.com/5-reasons-why-live-streaming-will-still-be-relevant-after-covid/#.
Xiph. 2015. “Xiph.org :: Derf's Test Media Collection.” Xiph.org :: Test Media.
https://media.xiph.org/video/derf/.

Spin Digital Video Technologies GmbH.
Helmholtzstraße 2-9, 10587 Berlin. Germany
www.spin-digital.com | info@spin-digital.com

Spin Digital and Spin Enc Live, Spin Player HEVC, and Spin Player VVC
are trademarks of Spin Digital Video Technologies GmbH.
Other trademarks remain the property of their owners, and are used here
for descriptive purposes.