MPEG video deployment in digital television: HEVC vs. AVC codec performance study

Abstract

The coding efficiency of three generations of video coding standards is compared by means of PSNR and subjective testing results. A unified approach is applied to the analysis of designs of MPEG-H HEVC, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and H.262/MPEG-2 Video reference implementation. The results of subjective tests for selected HD format sequences indicate that HEVC encoders can achieve equivalent subjective broadcast quality as encoders that conform to AVC when using approximately 50% less bit rate on average. Bitrate reduction based on PSNR and complexity based on encoding/decoding time of HM8 MP vs. AVC HP vs. MPEG-2 MP are tested at bitrates of 2, 3, 4.5, 7 and 10 Mbit/s using the encoding constraints typical for broadcasting applications.