ITU Approves H.265 / HEVC Video Codec

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on Friday granted first-stage approval for H.265, a.k.a. High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), as the successor to the widely-used H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC video codec.

H.265 / HEVC needs only half the bit-rate of H.264 and is the result of collaboration between the ITU Video Coding Experts Group and ISO/IEC MPEG.

The ITU press release notes, "ITU-T H.265 / ISO/IEC 23008-2 HEVC will provide a flexible, reliable and robust solution, future-proofed to support the next decade of video. The new standard is designed to take account of advancing screen resolutions and is expected to be phased in as high-end products and services outgrow the limits of current network and display technology."

High Efficiency Video Coding improves video quality, doubles the data compression ratio compared to H.264, and supports 8K UHD with resolutions up to 8192 x 4320. The committee draft of HEVC has been available since February of 2012 while now it's ready to move forward.