On rate-distortion modeling and extraction of H.264/SVC fine-granular scalable video

  • Authors:

  • Jun Sun;Wen Gao;Debin Zhao;Weiping Li

  • Affiliations:

  • Inst. of Comp. Sci. & Tech. and Inst. of Digital Media, Peking Univ., Institute of Computer Science and Technology, and Institute of Digital Media, Peking University, Beijing, China;Inst. of Comp. Sci. & Tech. and Inst. of Digital Media, Peking Univ., Institute of Computer Science and Technology, and Institute of Digital Media, Peking University, Beijing, China;Department of Computer Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China;Amity Systems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Fine-granular scalable (FGS) technologies in H.264/ AVC-based scalable video coding (SVC) provide a flexible foundation to accommodate different network capacities. To support efficient quality extraction, it is important to obtain the rate-distortion (R-D) or Distortion-Rate (D-R) function of each individual picture or a group of pictures (GOP). In this paper, firstly, the R-D function of SVC FGS pictures is analyzed with generalized Gaussian model and the D-R curve is proved to be a concave function overall. Considering the current sub-bitplane technology, the D-R function is revisited and inferred to be linear under MSE criterion within an FGS level, which also explains why the observed D-R curve with PSNR criterion is a piece-wise convex function. Secondly, the drift issue of SVC is analyzed, and a simple and effective distortion model is proposed to estimate the reconstruction distortion with drift error. Thirdly, with the above analysis and models, a virtual GOP concept is introduced, and a new priority setting algorithm is designed to achieve the optimal R-D performance in a virtual GOP. The D-R slope of each FGS packet and the D-R function of each virtual GOP are also obtained during the process. Finally, the DR slopes of FGS levels are used in quality layer assignment to achieve equivalent coding efficiency to the SVC test model but with significantly reduced complexity. The D-R functions of virtual GOPs are utilized to design a practical method for smooth quality reconstruction. Compared to the prior methods, the smoothed video quality is improved not only objectively but also subjectively.