This paper introduces the VISNET II DVC codec. This co-dec achieves very high RD performance thanks to the efficient combination of many state-of-the-art coding tools into a fully practical video codec. Experimental results show that the proposed DVC codec consistently outperforms H.264/AVC Intra. For sequences with coherent motion, it even surpasses H.264/AVC zero-motion. Finally, it is also always better than the DISCOVER DVC codec. Therefore, it is expected that the proposed high performing DVC codec will be used by other researchers in the field as a reference to benchmark their results.