In-Layer Multibuffer Framework for Rate-Controlled Scalable Video Coding

Signal Processing: Image Communication

et al. 2015

A two-level variable bit rate (VBR) control algorithm for hierarchical video coding, specifically tailored for the new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, is presented here. A long-term level monitors the current bit count along a sliding window of a few seconds, comprising several intra-periods (IPs) and shifted on an IP basis. This long-term view allows the accommodation of the naturally occurring rate variations at a slow pace, avoiding the annoying sharp quality changes commonly appearing when non-sliding window approaches are used. The bit excesses or defects observed at this level are evenly delivered to a short-term level mechanism that establishes target bit budgets for a narrower sliding window covering a single IP and shifting on a frame basis. At this level, an adequate quantization parameter is estimated to comply with the designated target bit rate. Recommended test conditions as well as two few minutes long video sequences with scene cuts have been used for the assessment of the proposed VBR controller. Comparisons with a state-of-the-art rate control algorithm have produced good results in terms of quality consistency, in exchange for moderate rate-distortion performance losses

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other alternative QP adjustment models already tested on H.264/AVC video coding for VBR applications, such as those that produce smooth QP variations relying on the actual rate and distortion of previously encoded frames [16,30], have not been applied yet to HEVC. This kind of QP control strategy is followed in this paper.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two-level sliding-window VBR control algorithm for video on demand streaming

de-Frutos-Lopez

Gonzalez-de-Suso

Signal Processing: Image Communication

et al. 2015

“…Although these approaches might be used in almost any application scenario, alternative RCAs have been designed to meet the specific demands of certain applications, such as video streaming and broadcast [51,52,53,54], digital storage [55,56,57,58], and video conferencing [59,60,61,62,63]. As already pointed out in the introduction section, for the particular case of video conferencing, the proposed RCAs aim at a short-term TBR adjustment for buffer overflow and underflow prevention by means of a QP regulation at MB level [59,60] and, in some cases, at row-of-MB level [61,62] in order to improve the R-D performance at the expense of higher bit rate fluctuations.…”

Section: Rate Control For Video Conferencing Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A parallel H.264/SVC encoder for high definition video conferencing

Signal Processing: Image Communication

Alvarez-Mesa

Mayer

et al. 2015

In this paper we present a video encoder specially developed and configured for high definition (HD) video conferencing. This video encoder brings together the following three requirements: H.264/Scalable Video Coding (SVC), parallel encoding on multicore platforms, and parallel-friendly rate control. With the first requirement, a minimum quality of service to every end-user receiver over Internet Protocol networks is guaranteed. With the second one, real-time execution is accomplished and, for this purpose, slice-level parallelism, for the main encoding loop, and block-level parallelism, for the upsampling and interpolation filtering processes, are combined. With the third one, a proper HD video content delivery under certain bit rate and end-to-end delay constraints is ensured. The experimental results prove that the proposed H.264/SVC video encoder is able to operate in real time over a wide range of target bit rates at the expense of reasonable losses in rate-distortion efficiency due to the frame partitioning into slices

“…The RC problem for hierarchical GOP structures has been studied extensively in H.264/AVC and SVC (the reader can be referred to [7] and [8] for details), but only a few RC algorithms have been proposed for the HEVC standard, of which those described in [9] and [10] are highlighted. Specifically, the algorithm proposed by Li et al in [10], in which a novel R-Lagrange multiplier (λ) model for bit rate regulation is presented, has been adopted by the JCTVC as the new reference RC algorithm in [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A rate control algorithm for HEVC with hierarchical GOP structures

2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing

Schierl

2013

Self Cite

In this paper a buffer-constrained rate control (RC) algorithm for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) with hierarchical group of pictures structures is proposed. Specifically, a quantization parameter (QP) cascading approach, which the QP value is increased from one temporal layer to the next, is employed to achieve high coding efficiency while maintaining the buffer fullness at secure levels. When compared to the current state-of-the-art RC algorithm, the experimental results show that our proposal achieves a slightly better rate-distortion performance and a remarkably better buffer control with an acceptable increase in computational complexity.Index Terms-High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), hierarchical video coding, rate control, quantization parameter cascading.