This paper describes an extension of the upcoming High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard for supporting spatial and quality scalable video coding. Besides scalable coding tools known from scalable profiles of prior video coding standards such as H.262/MPEG-2 Video and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, the proposed scalable HEVC extension includes new coding tools that further improve the coding efficiency of the enhancement layer. In particular, new coding modes by which base and enhancement layer signals are combined for forming an improved enhancement layer prediction signal have been added. All scalable coding tools have been integrated in a way that the low-level syntax and decoding process of HEVC remain unchanged to a large extent. Simulation results for typical application scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design. For spatial and quality scalable coding with two layers, bit-rate savings of about 20-30% have been measured relative to simulcasting the layers, which corresponds to a bit-rate overhead of about 5-15% relative to single-layer coding of the enhancement layer.

Date Published: 21 February 2013
PDF: 16 pages
Proc. SPIE 8666, Visual Information Processing and Communication IV, 866605 (21 February 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2009393

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8666:
Visual Information Processing and Communication IV
Amir Said; Onur G. Guleryuz; Robert L. Stevenson, Editor(s)