Observed Signal · Mar 27, 2026 · Industry Initiative · Source: https://martechseries.com/feed/ · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
MC‑IF Recruits Small Innovators to Boost VVC Adoption
The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC‑IF) is expanding membership eligibility in 2026 to recruit growth‑stage technology companies with under $300 million in annual revenue to accelerate commercial adoption of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) across streaming, mobile and broadcast. MC‑IF lowered its entry‑level fee to broaden participation and offers members a neutral interoperability forum, coordinated industry event participation, and joint communications to showcase real‑world VVC deployments. MC‑IF leaders—including Aytac Biber (board member, Qualcomm) and Justin Ridge (president, MC‑IF; principal engineer, Nokia)—said the move is intended to surface innovations from agile teams working on compression optimization, mobile delivery efficiency, broadcast scalability and software‑based deployment models. The article notes VVC (published July 2020) can reduce bitrates by about 50% versus HEVC/H.265 and supports HDR, Wide Color Gamut and computer‑generated imagery use cases.
Broadening MC‑IF membership to smaller innovators can accelerate real‑world VVC deployments, influencing streaming/broadcast bandwidth economics and device support—important for media delivery and CTV/OTT ecosystems but not an immediate industry‑wide shift.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Media Coding Industry Forum (MC‑IF) is expanding membership to include growth‑stage technology companies with less than $300 million in annual revenue.
- MC‑IF lowered/expanded its entry‑level fee to broaden participation among smaller innovators.
- MC‑IF offers members a neutral forum for interoperability discussions, coordinated participation in industry events, and joint communications to highlight VVC implementations.
- MC‑IF leaders highlighted innovation areas: compression optimization, mobile delivery efficiency, broadcast scalability, and software‑based deployment models.
- Versatile Video Coding (VVC), published in July 2020, provides roughly a 50% bitrate reduction compared with HEVC/H.265 and supports HDR, Wide Color Gamut (WGC), and computer‑generated imagery.
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