R-D Optimal Scalable Video Coding Using Soft Decision Quantization

Abstract

In this thesis, we study the concept of scalable video coding as implemented in the extension to the H.264 video coding standard. Specifically, for the spatial and quality scalability scenarios, we propose an optimization algorithm based on the Soft Decision Quantization (SDQ) concept, which aims at jointly optimizing all layers being encoded. The performance of the algorithm was assessed in an SVC implementation. Experimental results show, that the proposed method significantly improves the coding efficiency when compared to an unmodified SVC encoder.