Compression Performance of the Versatile Video Coding: HD and UHD Visual Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Video compression and content quality have become one of the most research topic in the recent years. Predominantly, trends obviously signpost that the video usage over the Internet is on the upsurge. Simultaneously, users’ requirement for enlarged resolution and higher quality is rising. Consequently, a huge effort has been made for video coding technologies and quality monitoring. In this paper, we present a subjective-based comparison as well as an objective measurement between the newest Versatile Video Coding (VVC) and the well-known High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standards. Several videos of various content are selected as tested sequences. Both High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD) resolutions are used in this experiment. An extensive range of bit-rates from low to high bit-rates were selected. These sequences are encoded using both HEVC reference software (HM-16.2) and the latest reference software of VVC (VTM-5.0). Obtained results have shown that VVC outperforms consistently HEVC, for realistic bit rates and quality levels, in the range of 40% on the subjective scale. For the objective measurements, using PSNR, SSIM and VMAF as quality metrics, the quality enhancement of VVC over HEVC is ranging from 31% to 40%, depending on video content and spatial resolution.