HEVC backward compatible scalability: A low encoding complexity distributed video coding based approach

• Proposes a novel HEVC backward compatible scalable extension solution, named DSVC, which exploits the distributed video coding principle at the enhancement layers (ELs).
• Proposes several advanced coding tools which are integrated in a quality scalable DSVC framework, notably a novel side information creation process, a correlation modeling solution and a novel EL coding mode selection method.
• Illustrates the advancements of DSVC framework in respect to the relevant alternative simulcast and scalable coding solutions while offering a lower encoding complexity.

The growing heterogeneity and dynamic nature of the networks, terminals, and usage environments has boosted the need for powerful scalable video coding engines able to efficiently adapt to changing consumption conditions. Some emerging applications such as video surveillance, visual sensor networks, and remote space transmission require scalable coding solutions, which are not only compression efficient but also provide low encoding complexity and high error resilience. Following the call for scalable extensions of the emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, targeting the so-called Scalable HEVC (SHVC) standard, this paper proposes a novel scalable video coding solution offering quality scalability by combining the predictive and distributed video coding approaches by means of an HEVC compliant base layer and distributed coding enhancement layers. The proposed Distributed Scalable Video Coding (DSVC) solution follows an Intra-encoding with Inter-decoding approach to provide low encoding complexity and error robustness while achieving high compression. Towards this objective, this paper adopts a novel coding architecture and proposes several novel enhancement layers coding tools, notably for side information creation, correlation modeling, and coding mode selection. The experimental results reveal that the DSVC RD performance outperforms the relevant alternative coding solutions, notably by up to 33.22% and 11.28% BD-Rate gains regarding the relevant HEVC-Simulcast and SHVC-Intra-benchmarks, while achieving a lower encoding complexity.