Tencent266 ranks first in 12 metrics in the 1fps track of the 2021 MSU 4K Video Codec Comparison

The results of the 2021 MSU 4K Video Codec Comparison were announced on April 21, 2022. Tencent266, independently developed by the Tencent O266 team to support the latest international video coding standard H.266/VVC, stood out in the highly competitive 4K 1fps track. Among codecs implementing H.266/VVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1, and proprietary formats, Tencent O266 competed across 14 key metrics and ranked first in 12, achieving the best overall performance among all entrants. Tencent266 also swept the top rankings for VMAF, widely recognized in the industry as the metric most closely correlated with subjective visual quality.

The MSU comparison

Launched in 2003 and organized by the Graphics Media Lab at Moscow State University, the MSU Video Codec Comparison evaluates the performance of open-source and proprietary codecs. Participation by major companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance has raised its profile in China and attracted growing industry attention. Over the years, the comparison has improved the completeness and reliability of its evaluations through more systematic video selection and additional objective quality metrics.

With 4K and 10-bit video coding becoming key directions for future codec technology, MSU established a dedicated competition that evaluates both 8-bit and 10-bit performance. The 1fps track has become a primary testing ground for vendors because of its broad relevance to video-on-demand and short-video services.

Entrants in this 4K competition included ByteDance's BVC1 (HEVC) and BVC2 (proprietary), iQIYI's QAV1 (AV1), XAV1 (AV1), Intel's SVT-AV1 (AV1), and HHI's vvenc (VVC). Alongside Tencent266, Tencent also entered TXAV1 (AV1) and V265 (HEVC), both of which achieved excellent results.

Tencent266

The first edition of H.266/VVC, the latest generation of international video coding standards, was completed in July 2020. Compared with its predecessor H.265/HEVC, H.266/VVC can halve video bandwidth at the same subjective quality. It also offers stronger compression than AOM's latest standard, AV1. Tencent Media Lab actively participated in H.266/VVC standardization, serving in important roles such as standard co-editor and reference software co-chair while making major technical contributions. According to German intellectual property platform IPlytics , Tencent ranks third worldwide in technical contributions to H.266/VVC, placing it among the global leaders. These advances help prevent a repeat of the constraints faced by Chinese VCD and DVD companies in the 1990s because they lacked essential video standard patents.

Tencent266 is Tencent's independently developed H.266/VVC codec, created through collaboration led by Tencent Media Lab with teams including WeChat, Tencent Cloud, and Tencent Video. The O266 project was built entirely from scratch by Tencent, without using standards reference software or open-source code, avoiding associated copyright issues at the source.

Within three months of H.266/VVC being finalized, the Tencent O266 team became the first in China to release an open-source real-time H.266/VVC player, O266player, based on the Tencent266 decoder, with internationally leading performance. Tencent266's first-place rankings in most metrics of the MSU 4K 1fps track further demonstrate Tencent's strength in video compression.