A low-complexity closed-loop H.264/AVC to quality-scalable SVC transcoder

Abstract

Efficient broadcasting of video content to end-users often requires one or more adaptations of the bitstream, due to varying network conditions and different end-user device characteristics. To ensure a high quality of experience for all end-users, the highest possible quality of the bitstream and, contradictory, connectivity for low bandwidth devices should be guaranteed. H.264/AVC allows only a single (high quality) bitstream. Therefore, the lower bit rates need adaptations of the input bitstream, requiring processing power, delay and energy. By transcoding the existing H.264/AVC bitstream to SVC, bit rate adaptations can be efficiently performed in the network. Consequently, only the cost of one transcoding step is required. To ensure optimal transcoding, we present a low-complexity solution for transcoding H.264/AVC bitstreams to SVC. The proposed system can be applied in a broadcasting environment, since less than 10% of the normal transcoding complexity is needed, while coding efficiency is maintained.