The VC-2 HQ (High Quality) codec is a lightweight video compression IP core with ultra-low latency.

It is ideally suited for ultra-low latency video transmission. In addition, the low complexity of the algorithm allows cost-effective compression of the video stream. The VC-2 High Quality compression algorithm is a simple wavelet-based intra-frame codec. The algorithm is described in the SMPTE 2042 standard, VC-2 Video Compression .

For instance, a typical use case of the VC-2 HQ codec is the reduction of the bandwidth required to transport HD, 4K and high frame rate video signals.

The algorithm is especially designed to achieve low latency. Due to its low complexity, the VC-2 HQ encoder and decoder do not require any external memory. The resource usage being very low, it can be easily integrated in existing designs and low-end Altera and Xilinx FPGA s.