German video codec company Spin Digital has developed software encoding technology built on the VVC (Versatile Video Coding) standard.
Spin Digital’s VVC encoder has been built from the ground up, allowing it to avoid the constraints of legacy code and deliver significant gains in processing efficiency.
According to the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer Mauricio Alvarez-Mesa, that decision means Spin Digital is seeing “consistent 20 per cent bitrate savings in real-time, live environments using standard cloud infrastructure.
“This makes VVC not just a theoretical improvement but a practical tool for companies trying to scale high-quality live video,” said Alvarez-Mesa.
Spin Digital has successfully demonstrated 8K live streaming at major global events, including proof-of-concept trials during the Olympic Games.
“Live encoding is a different beast,” Alvarez-Mesa said. “You need low latency, high visual quality, and the ability to handle multiple streams at once—all while staying within compute budgets.”
“A few years ago, it was widely believed you couldn’t deploy new codecs without dedicated hardware,” he continued. “Now, with more powerful CPUs and the rise of short-form video, even mobile platforms are becoming viable targets for software-based VVC playback.”
Spin Digital’s encoder has already been licensed by some major customers in Japan, Korea and the US. There are also several others looking at the technology for both OTT, traditional broadcast and low-latency applications.
“If we can show that VVC works now, in real deployments, it lowers the perceived risk for others,” Alvarez-Mesa added. “That’s what drives adoption—not specs, but confidence.”
