VVC in the cloud and browser playback: it works.

The most recent international video coding standard that was developed jointly by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC is Versatile Video Coding (VVC). While VVC contains a feature set for a very wide range of applications it also allows for significant bit-rate reductions of around 50% for the same subjective video quality compared to its predecessor, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). After the standardization was finished in July 2020, many activities were started to allow integration of VVC into practical applications. This paper shows how a practical workflow using VVC for a streaming application is already possible today. For this, we showcase how the Fraunhofer VVenC VVC encoder was implemented into the cloud-based encoding solution from Bitmovin. It is further detailed how VVC changes practical decisions like selecting the optimal bitrate ladder and how the cost and performance compare to other codecs. Finally, it is demonstrated how the Fraunhofer VVdeC decoder can be used with WebAssembly to make real time VVC playback in the browser possible.