High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a video codec developed by MPEG and ITU-T. It is the successor to the popular H.264/AVC codec.
Compared to AVC, HEVC provides improved compression ratios, particularly at resolutions above 1080p. Computationally, it is comparatively expensive to encode and decode, but as of 2021 in-hardware decoders are becoming more common and hardware encoders are common in enthusiast and professional desktop graphics cards. Decoder support is approaching pervasive except amongst significantly laggard devices.