A fast hybrid scalable H.264/AVC and HEVC encoder

Abstract

Over the past years, multimedia usage has changed dramatically, with networks and terminals of diverse bandwidths and capabilities coexisting, making an adaptability of the video stream necessary. By the use of video scalability schemes, video streams would be able to adapt to these heterogeneous networks and a wide range of terminals. Moreover, some devices may be able to decode a subset of all the available video standards, e.g. most devices can decode the well-known H.264/advanced video coding (AVC) standard, which has dominated the market for the past 10 years. However, more recent devices can take the advantage of more modern standards whose compression performance is much higher, such as high-efficiency video coding (HEVC). This problem can be solved by the use of hybrid scalability, which allows the use of H.264/AVC for the base layer and HEVC for the enhancement layers. However, scalable video coding is very computationally expensive, so acceleration techniques are of great help in this kind of encoders. This paper presents a fast inter prediction algorithm which makes use of information from H.264/AVC base layer encoding and uses it to make faster decisions in HEVC. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a good tradeoff between coding efficiency and complexity.