The company that helped develop H.264 and H.265 codecs, Fraunhofer, developed a new codec together with Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, namely H.266.

The new H.266 codec is said to reduce the file size as much as by half – that’s 50% of the original file size. This will allow video files to be much smaller and to allow for much faster data transfer.

H.266, also called VVC (Versatile Video Coding) is said to be ready by the end of the year and should make a big difference in capturing (and storing) 4K and 8K video.

This new format will allow video files to be transferred to other locations or uploaded online much faster, even when dealing with 8K content.

Fraunhofer are saying that the new H.266 codec will half the file size keeping the same perceptual quality, so we shouldn’t see any difference in quality of the video content. That’s video files 50% smaller compared to videos compressed using H.265 codec, which also reduced file size by half when it came out (compared to videos compressed using H.264).

New H.266 codec will become especially beneficial in streaming online video by reducing the file size of streaming high-resolution video and making it faster to stream, with services like Netflix, Youtube, etc.

According to creators of the new codec, at the time of writing these worlds, the hardware to support the new codec is being worked on and should become available later this year.