High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)

Overview

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the current joint video coding standardization project of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (ITU-T Q.6/SG 16) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11).

The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) was established to work on this project. The scope of this group was extended to continue working on Format Range Extensions (RExt), Scalable HEVC (SHVC) and Screen Content Coding (SCC) as extensions of HEVC.

The Joint Collaborative Team on 3D Video Coding Extension Development (JCT-3V) was established to work on multiview and 3D video coding extensions of HEVC and other video coding standards.

The first version of the HEVC standard was finalized in April 2013.

The second version of HEVC including the RExt, SHVC and MV-HEVC extensions was finalized in October 2014.

The third version of HEVC including the 3D-HEVC extension was finalized in February 2015.

Documents

HEVC reference software

The reference software for HEVC is called HM (HEVC Test Model).

The HM software is maintained using the git version control system on a GitLab server.

The software was historically maintained in a subversion repository. All version history was imported into the git repository. The original subversion repositories can still be accessed at:

Recommendation/Standard:

HEVC reference software documentation

Conformance

Recommendation/Standard:

Bitstreams

Bug reporting

Specification and software bugs can be reported using the HEVC bug tracker:

Further information

Overview Papers

For papers on the HEVC extensions see the pages on RExt, SHVC, MV-HEVC and 3D-HEVC.

JCT-VC chairs

  • Jens-Rainer Ohm
  • Gary J. Sullivan

Version 1 specification editors

  • Benjamin Bross
  • Woo-Jin Han
  • Jens-Rainer Ohm
  • Gary J. Sullivan
  • Ye-Kui Wang
  • Thomas Wiegand

HM software coordinators

  • Karsten Suehring
  • Karl Sharman

Former HM software coordinators

  • Frank Bossen
  • David Flynn