For such a small virtual industry event, Chinese giant Tencent had a domineering presence at this week’s Picture Coding Symposium 2021. Faultline sat through back-to-back presentations from four engineers and researchers within Tencent’s Media Lab – flexing some serious muscles in areas from video codec patents and AI, to 4K, 8K and immersive formats. Kicking off proceedings was Dr. Stephan Wenger, Senior Director of Intellectual Property and Standards at Tencent America, who described an industry worsening from an implementor perspective. While video codec royalties for AVC (H.264) are charged at between $0.10 to $0.20 per-device, depending on volume, royalties for HEVC (H.265) are rising to more than a dollar per-device, again depending on volume and including additional fees per unit…