Abstract

This paper deals with the overview of the latest video coding standard High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). It also presents a performance comparison of the two latest video coding standards H.264/MPEG-AVC and H.265/MPEG-HEVC. According to the experimental results obtained for a whole test set of video sequences by using similar encoding configurations, H.265/MPEG-HEVC provides significant average bit-rate savings of around 40%.

Keywords:

CABAC, CAVLC, H.264/AVC, HEVC, PSNR, and SBAC.

Introduction

The H.264/AVC video coding standard explicitly defines syntax elements, such as motion vectors, block coefficients, picture numbers, and the order they appear in the video bitstream. There are several advanced features of the H.264/AVC video codec distinguishing it from previous video compression standards like H.261, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and H.263.

The H.265/MPEG-HEVC standard was designed for almost all existing H.264/MPEG-AVC applications, emphasizing high-resolution video coding. Dramatic bit-rate savings were achieved while maintaining visual quality, compared to its predecessor.

In parallel with open standardization processes by ITU-T and ISO/IEC, companies have developed proprietary video codecs. One such proprietary codec is the VP8 codec developed by On2 Technologies® Inc., later acquired by Google®. This led to the development of its successor VP9.

References

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