Low complexity video coding using SMPTE VC-2

• Published in: Proceedings of SPIE, the international society for optical engineering Vol. 8856; pp. 885613 - 885613-15
• Main Author: Borer, Tim
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: SPIE 01.01.2013
• Subjects: Codec; Coding; Color; Complexity; Compression ratio; Texture; Wavelet
• ISBN: 9780819497062; 0819497061
• ISSN: 0277-786X
• DOI: 10.1117/12.2023218

Low complexity video coding addresses different applications, and is complementary to, video coding for delivery to the end user. Delivery codecs, such as the MPEG/ITU standards, provide very high compression ratios, but require high complexity and high latency. Some applications, by contrast, need the opposite characteristics of low complexity and low latency at low compression ratios. This paper discusses the applications and requirements of low complexity coding and, after discussing the prior art, describes the standard VC-2 (SMPTE 2042) codec, which is a wavelet codec designed for low complexity and ultra-low latency. VC-2 provides a wide range of coding parameters and compression ratios, allowing it to address applications such as texture coding, lossless and high dynamic range coding. In particular this paper describes the results for the low complexity coding parameters of 2 and 3 level Haar and LeGall wavelet kernels, for image regions of 4x4 and 8x8 pixels with both luma/color difference signals and RGB. The paper indicates the quality that may be achieved at various compression ratios and also clearly shows the benefit of coding luma and color components rather than RGB.