“The JVT Advanced Video Coding Standard: Complexity and Performance Analysis on a Tool-by-tool Basis”

Abstract

The Advanced Video Codec (AVC), currently being defined by a Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC and ITU-T, aims at enhanced coding efficiency and network friendliness over a wide range of transmission systems. While the basic framework is similar to the motion compensated hybrid scheme of previous video coding standards, additional tools improve the compression efficiency at the expense of an increased implementation cost. This paper presents a systematic analysis of the complexity and the rate-distortion performances of the new tools over a wide variety of video contents. The simulation results show how the improved coding efficiency, up to 50 %, comes with a complexity increase of more than one order of magnitude at the encoder and a factor 2 for the decoder. This represents a design challenge for resource constrained electronic systems such as wireless devices or cost-effective consumer terminals. A thorough video tool-by-tool analysis, carried out in terms of memory cost, computational burden and compression efficiency, indicates that a proper use of the AVC tools allows for the same performance as the most complex configuration (all tools on) while considerably reducing the complexity. The reported results highlight the AVC implementation bottlenecks, provide input to assist the definition of profiles in the standard and enable the selection of the optimal balance between coding efficiency and implementation complexity.