The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are seeking innovations that significantly surpass the capabilities of the current Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard and have issued a call for proposals for the next generation of video-compression technology.
The formal registration for proposals period opens on 1 August and ends on 1 September 2026.
The Call for Proposals from the Joint Video Experts Team – a partnership of ITU-T Study Group 21 (Multimedia, content delivery and cable TV) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information) – marks the start of the process to develop a new video coding standard by 2029.
Submissions will be evaluated by the 45th meeting of the Joint Video Experts Team in January 2027.
The project continues a longstanding tradition of joint work that has produced VVC (ITU H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3), along with the Emmy-winning High Efficiency Video Coding (ITU H.265 | ISO/IEC 23008-2) and Advanced Video Coding (ITU H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10).
The Call for Proposals covers a broad range of content types and use cases, including streaming services, video conferencing, social media, gaming, content creation, extended reality (XR), machine vision, and high-dynamic-range (HDR) video.
The Joint Video Experts Team said that proposals may introduce entirely new coding tools, improved system architectures, or novel approaches to advance the state of the art in video compression.
Reflecting an increasingly diverse video ecosystem, innovations will be evaluated across diverse test content ranging from HDR and ultra-high definition (UHD) video to gaming, screen content, and user-generated media.
The call invites innovations that demonstrate either significantly improved compression performance or important new functionality beyond the capabilities of VVC.
The groups said that they welcome innovations addressing future multimedia requirements, including those arising from the continued evolution of AI-enabled content creation, processing, analysis, and delivery.
All proposals will undergo rigorous evaluation through both formal subjective quality assessment and objective performance measurements.
Proposals can be submitted at the Call for Proposals.
