In April 2020, MPEG announced the completion of the new ISO/IEC 23094-1 standard, i.e., MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC). There is a constant demand for more efficient video coding technologies, but coding efficiency is not the only factor determining the industry’s choice of video coding technology for products and services. The standard offers improved compression efficiency compared to existing video coding standards and is based on the statements of all contributors to the standard who have committed to announce their license terms for the MPEG-5 EVC standard no later than two years after the FDIS publication date.
The MPEG-5 EVC defines two important profiles, including “Baseline profile” and “Main profile”. The “Baseline profile” contains only technologies that are older than 20 years or otherwise freely available for use in the standard. In addition, the “Main profile” adds a small number of additional tools, each of which can be either cleanly disabled or switched to the corresponding baseline tool on an individual basis.