High Efficiency Video Coding

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a patent-encumbered video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). The standard was published in 2013. In comparison to AVC, HEVC can be used to achieve from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. For example, standard 4K video capture at 30 frames per second typically requires a target bitrate of approximately 50 Mbps using HEVC, requiring roughly 22.5 GB of storage volume per hour, compared to the 100 Mbps and 45 GB per hour required by older H.264 profiles. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD, and unlike the primarily eight-bit AVC, HEVC's higher-fidelity Main 10 profile has been incorporated into nearly all supporting hardware. The High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) is a container format whose default codec is HEVC.

While AVC uses the integer discrete cosine transform (DCT) with 4×4 and 8×8 block sizes, HEVC uses both integer DCT and discrete sine transform (DST) with varied block sizes between 4×4 and 32×32.