SMPTE VC-2

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is currently working on a new video coding standard called VC-2, optimised for professional production and archiving applications, where the emphasis is on quality and low latency.

VC-2 is actually the DiracPro codec, a wavelet-based video compression technology developed by the R&D labs of the UK broadcaster BBC. VC-2 is royalty free.

Declared features are:

• Intra-frame only (Inter prediction also available if required)
• 10 bit 4:2:2
• No subsampling
• Lossless or visually lossless compression
• Low latency on encode/decode
• Robust over multiple passes
• Ease of transport (can use a range of transport standards)
• Low complexity for decoding
• Open Specification
• Multiple vendor
• Support for multiple HD image formats and frame rates.

More info on diracvideo.org and http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/index.shtml.