Extensions to HEVC

Abstract

In this chapter, a survey of the currently ongoing activities for extension of the HEVC specification is provided. As these activities are beyond the scope of this book and have not been finalized by the time of writing, the presentation is kept at a higher level. The extension work currently includes support for more color formats and higher bit depths, support of spatial and fidelity scalability, and support of multiview and 3D-video coding. In the context of HEVC, the range extensions are often referred to by the short form RExt. The scalable extension of HEVC is referred to as Scalable High Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC). The extensions for multiview and 3D-video are referred to as Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding (MV-HEVC) and 3D High Efficiency Video Coding (3D-HEVC), respectively. Scalable and multiview extensions as well as the range extensions have been specified for previous standards, particularly including H.264 | AVC. The most relevant differences in the realization of the extension functionality are highlighted in each of the corresponding sections.