One salve to the video codec angst at IBC 2026 (see separate skirting story) came from a not entirely unexpected source. R&D powerhouse InterDigital, the force behind several of the high-profile codec patent lawsuits contributing to the industry’s agitation, teamed up with Japanese broadcaster NHK in Amsterdam to demonstrate VVC Multilayer Coding. Hosted at the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF), tucked away in Hall 2, the demonstration showed two aspects of the VVC Multilayer Main 10 profile: content overlay and spatial/quality scalability. The first is the fun one. NHK demonstrated how a common base video could be combined with an enhancement layer carrying additional content such as captions, sign-language presentation or reframed visuals. The viewer can select the enhanced version…