From HEVC to VVC: The First Development Steps of a Practical Intra Video Encoder

Versatile Video Coding (VVC/H.266) is an emerging successor to the widespread High Efficiency (HEVC/H.265) and shown double coding efficiency for same subjective visual quality. Nevertheless, VVC still adopts similar hybrid video scheme as HEVC thereby sets scene reusing many tools techniques or with minor modifications. This paper explores feasibility of developing a practical software intra encoder from our open-source Kvazaar encoder. The outcome this work called uvg266 that distributed under permissive 3-clause BSD license Kvazaar. inherits optimized flow all upgradable tools, but it also introduces basic not available in HEVC. To best knowledge, first describe implementation details upgrading rapid development time promising performance make proposal viable approach over scratch.