High Efficiency Video Coding

Supervisor: Prof Ebroul Izquierdo

Research group(s): Multimedia and Vision

High and ultrahigh resolution cameras and displays are becoming pervasive. They enable a more immersive and compelling experience when watching TV, films or any other multimedia content over conventional broadcasting channels or the internet. The format to deliver this improved quality of experience is called Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV). UHDTV requires 3840x2160 pixels/frame or 7680x4320 pixels/frame and a temporal resolutions of up to 120 frames per second. Clearly, the volume of data associated with UHDTV signals is enormous. Hence, to be able to deliver such signals over conventional networks, efficient video compression technology is needed. In response to this acute need, the ITU Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) joined efforts in a partnership called Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) to develop the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. Version 1 of HEVC was finalised in January 2013 and proved to outperform its predecessor Advanced Video Coding (AVC) by providing up to 50% bitrate reduction for the same perceived quality. For UHD content, the reduction is even higher than 50%. Given the superior performance, HEVC will be the best candidate in the deployment of UHDTV services. As expected, this improved compression efficiency comes at the expense of increased complexity. Therefore, any practical implementation must optimise HEVC coding by reducing the complexity without sacrificing the compression performance. This PhD project will develop techniques to greatly reduce the complicity of the HEVC video coding standard. The aim is to provide tools for HEVC that can be implemented or ported to commercial video coders building on the related comprehensive expertise of the MMV group at QMUL and previously implemented commercial HEVC coders as the Turing codec developed in cooperation with The BBC (http://turingcodec.org/)