Lightweight video codec features ultra-low latency

9th September 2015

Barco

Jordan Mulcare

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At IBC 2015 Show in Amsterdam, Barco Silex announced that the VC-2 Low Delay codec is now available for licensing to broadcast equipment manufacturers. The VC-2 Low Delay codec is a patent-free lightweight compression codec suited to encode HD video content. VC-2 LD has ultra-low latency and compresses video streams by a compression ratio of four times visually lossless.

Originally developed by the BBC Research as Dirac Pro and later standardised as SMPTE 2042, the VC-2 LD codec is patent-free which will facilitate market adoption and interoperability. The SMPTE ST-2047 standard already defines the carriage of high resolution video (up to 1080p60) over HD-SDI using VC-2 LD as a mezzanine compression algorithm. The RTP mapping of the codec is also currently being standardised as an IETF RFC in order to maximise interoperability of the transport over IP networks.

VC-2 Low Delay will enable cost saving associated to the transport of high resolution and high frame rate video content. For example, a 1080p60 stream can be transported over a single 1Gb/s Ethernet cable and up to three 4K/UHD stream at 60fps can be transported over 10Gb/s cable.

“A key distinguishing feature of VC-2 is that it is an open technology designed to avoid patent infringements. So it can be easily included in video production equipment as a hardware or software solution, without the potential costs, uncertainties and practical difficulties of including other proprietary codecs,” says Jean-Marie Cloquet, Product Manager of the video division, Barco Silex.