Efficient parallel architecture of an intra-only scalable multi-layer HEVC encoder
Ronan Parois, Wassim Hamidouche, Elie Gabriel Mora, Mickaël Raulet, Olivier Déforges · 2016
The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard enables meeting new video quality demands such as Ultra High Definition (UHD). Its scalable extension (SHVC) allows encoding simultaneously different representations of a video, organised in layers. Thanks to inter-layer predictions, SHVC provides bit-rate savings compared to the equivalent HEVC simulcast encoding. Therefore, SHVC seems a promising solution for both broadcast and storage applications. This paper proposes a multi-layer architecture of a pipelined software HEVC encoders with two main settings: a live setting for real-time encoding and a file setting for encoding with better fidelity. The proposed architecture provides a good trade-off between coding rate and coding efficiency achieving real-time performance of 1080p60 and 1600p30 sequences in 2× spatial scalability. Moreover, experimental results show more than a 26× and 300× speed-up for the file and live settings, respectively, with respect to the scalable reference software (SHM) in an intra-only configuration.