uvg266

uvg266 is an open-source software encoder for encoding to the H.266 / VVC codec. Developed by the Ultra Video Group, written in C and licensed under BSD 3-clause. The encoder is based on Kvazaar, their open source HEVC encoder solution.

Installation

Arch Linux

uvg266 is available in the Arch User Repository (AUR) as uvg266 and uvg266-git.

Compiling

Ultra Video Group does not ship any pre-built binaries of their encoders so you’ll have to compile them yourself.

Windows users are recommended to compile via MinGW-W64 which comes with MSYS2.

Caution

Compilation requires GNU Make and CMake

Tip

The following build procedure should work across all common operating systems. Using Clang instead of GCC works.

You may add -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-flto -O3 -march=native" -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-flto -O3 -march=native -pipe -fno-plt" -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS_INIT="-flto=8 -static" in CMake for better performance.

git clone https://github.com/ultravideo/uvg266.git
cd uvg266/build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=0
make -j 8

Binaries will be available in the same folder (build), or you can run make install on Linux to install (May need elevated permissions).

10-bit Support

You need to compile with -DUVG_BIT_DEPTH=10 in the CMake -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS option to enable support for encoding 10-bit videos.

For example:

-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-DUVG_BIT_DEPTH=10"

With native optimizations:

-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-flto -O3 -march=native -pipe -fno-plt -DUVG_BIT_DEPTH=10"

Caution

Encoding 10-bit with uvg266 is significantly slower as the developers only prioritized SIMD optimizations for 8-bit, and can get really buggy.

Usage

Simple Y4M input with QP 20 and raw 266 bitstream output

uvg266 -i input.y4m --input-file-format y4m --qp 20 -o output.266

Preset slow, CRF 20, Y4M input

uvg266 -i input.y4m --input-file-format y4m --qp 20 --preset slow -o output.266

FFmpeg piping

ffmpeg -v error -i input.mkv -f yuv4mpegpipe -strict -1 - | uvg266 -i - --input-file-format y4m --qp 20 --preset slow -o output.266

Troubleshooting

1. Could not find a strategy for crc32c_8x8! - You’re out of luck, uvg266 failed to initialize its block partitioning strategy for your specific CPU instruction set, so you can’t use the encoder or encode that specific video.