JCTVC

JCTVC, or the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding, is a joint working group formed by ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee JTC1/SC29/WG11 (MPEG). It coordinates research, development, and standardization of next-generation video coding technologies, providing a common forum for evaluating proposals, integrating coding tools, and advancing test materials across organizations.

The group traces its origins to the successor structure of the Joint Video Team (JVT) that developed H.264/AVC. Established to streamline collaboration between ITU-T and MPEG, JCTVC serves as the central platform for jointly developing and refining video coding standards, aligning technical directions, and sharing reference software and evaluation results.

JCTVC has overseen the development of major standards including High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, also known as H.265), whose standardization was completed in the early 2010s, with HM (HEVC Test Model) serving as the reference software. More recently, it coordinated the development of Versatile Video Coding (VVC, or H.266), finalized in the late 2010s to 2020, with VTM (VVC Test Model) as its reference software. The group also produces coding tool descriptions, test sequences, conformance bitstreams, and evaluation reports to support rollout and interoperability.

Meetings are held periodically and involve participants from academia, industry, and research laboratories worldwide. Outputs include technical documents, coding tool descriptions, and test material used for validation and comparison across candidate technologies.

JCTVC’s work underpins widely adopted video compression standards, influencing streaming, broadcasting, and storage applications by providing a coordinated, industry-wide framework for developing next-generation codecs.