High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)

OVERVIEW:

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the current joint video coding standardization project of ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (ITU-T Q.6/SG 16) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11).

The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) has been established to work on this project.

Software resources:

§  HEVCsoftware repository (main at HHI)

§ HEVC software repository (mirror at BBC)

§  HEVC Software bug tracker (at BBC)

§Automatically generated build results (at BBC)

§  HEVC 3D extension software repository (at HHI)

§  Automatically generated build results for HEVC 3D extension (at BBC)

Documents:

§ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding 
§  http://www.h265.net/

§  http://iphome.hhi.de/wiegand/assets/pdfs/2012_12_IEEE-HEVC-Overview.pdf

§ JCT-VC Documents

§  Current HEVC Draft (DIS, JCTVC-J1003)

§  HEVC Reference Software Manual (JCTVC-F634)

§  HEVC Software Development Guidelines (JCTVC-H1001)

§  HEVC Software doxygen generated documentation

§ JCT-3V Documents (3D extensions)

§ Rate Distortion Modeling For High Efficiency Video Coding
§ http://www.h265.net/2009/06/quantization-techniques-in-jmkta-part-2.html

§ http://iphome.hhi.de/wiegand/assets/pdfs/2012_12_IEEE-HEVC-Performance.pdf

Further information:

§  HEVC contributions of the Image & Video Coding Group at HHI

§  HHI contributions to the 3D HEVC extension

Optimizaiton:

1. http://www-ee.uta.edu/Dip/Courses/EE5359/Projects/Spring2013/Kushal_Shah/Kushal_Shah_Final.pdf
2. http://www.ic.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg121/Source-Coding_WS12/selected-readings/2012_12_HEVC-Complexity.pdf
3. http://www-mtl.mit.edu/researchgroups/icsystems/pubs/conferences/2009/sze_icip2009_paper.pdf
4. http://www.aoni.waseda.jp/zhou/pdf/13-icip-JZhou.pdf
5. http://www.h265.net/2009/06/quantization-techniques-in-jmkta-part-4.html
6. http://www.cse.psu.edu/~xydong/files/proceedings/ISSCC2011/files/D07_02.pdf

Approval:

http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/01.aspx#.UQVUn79NXeS

The main themes around this fight can be summed in two main debates:

• Paid versus free: H.264 requires a license to use and deploy, which prohibits a lot of use cases and adopters; VP8 is free, allowing everyone to use it (on paper at least)
• Interoperable versus new: H.264 is commonly used with a huge ecosystem of existing vendors and deployed products, making it suitable for interoperability and adoption; VP8 is brand new, making its current footprint in chipsets, vendors and knowledge significantly smaller

While companies are fighting this round with no apparent winner so far, there’s another round brewing, waiting just around the corner: the successors of both of these codecs.