Presentation of the paper at the 18th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication (ISCC 2013), Split, Croatia, July 2013.

1. SCALABLE VIDEO CODING GUIDELINES
AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS
FOR ADAPTIVE MEDIA DELIVERY
OF HIGH-DEFINITION CONTENT
Michael Grafl et al. 1SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content
Michael Grafl, Christian Timmerer,
Hermann Hellwagner, Wael Cherif,
Daniel Negru, Stefano Battista

2. OUTLINE
 Introduction
 Scalable Video Coding
 Objectives
 Encoding Recommendations
 Multi-Bitrate Streaming of Single-Layer Formats
 Deduced Recommendations for SVC
 High-Definition SVC Encoding Performance
 Test-bed Setup
 Rate Control Modes
 Combining of Spatial and Quality Scalability
 Number of Quality Layers
 Requantization of Quality Layers
 Conclusions
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 2

3. INTRODUCTION
 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of H.264/AVC
 Enables easy (in-network) adaptation of videos
 Temporal scalability (inherited from AVC)
 Spatial scalability
 Quality (SNR) scalability
 Layered video coding
 Base layer (AVC-compatible) + enhancement layers
 ~10% coding overhead per layer compared to AVC
 Encoding configurations must be chosen
carefully
 Existing SVC studies rarely consider configurations of real
industry streaming systems
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 3

4. SCALABLE VIDEO CODING FRAMEWORK
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 4
Quality
ResolutionFrame rate Which bitrates?
Which resolutions?
Number of layers?
Combination of layers?

5. OBJECTIVES
 Devise SVC encoding guidelines
 Deduce common resolutions and bitrates from
industry solutions
 Focus on HD content for adaptive media
streaming
 Evaluate various SVC configurations and
encoders
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 5

6. MULTI-BITRATE STREAMING SOLUTIONS
 Prominent streaming solutions providing AVC
encoding recommendations
 Apple HTTP Live Streaming
 Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming
 Microsoft Smooth Streaming
 YouTube
 MTV
 Recommendations were analyzed, aggregated
and adjusted for SVC streaming
Full list of 26 resolutions & (even more) bitrates: http://alicante.itec.aau.at/am1.html
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 6

7. BITRATE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AVC
Resolution
Suggested bitrates
(4 streams) [Mbps]
Suggested bitrates
(2 streams) [Mbps]
1920x1080 8, 6, 5, 4 8, 5.5
1280x720 6, 4, 2.5, 1.5 4.5, 2.5
704x576 [Intentionally left blank] 2, 1.2
960x540 [Intentionally left blank] 2.25, 1.8
640x360 [Intentionally left blank] 1.6, 0.6
352x288 1.5, 0.9, 0.45, 0.25 1.2, 0.3
176x144 [Intentionally left blank] 0.1, 0.05
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 7
For SVC add: +0%+10%+20%+30% +10% +10%
Dyadicspatial
scalability

8. BITRATE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SVC
Resolution
Suggested bitrates
(4 bitrates) [Mbps]
Suggested bitrates
(2 bitrates) [Mbps]
1920x1080 10.4, 7.2, 5.5, 4 8.8, 6.05
1280x720 7.8, 4.8, 2.75, 1.5 5, 2.75
704x576 [Intentionally left blank] 2.2, 1.35
960x540 [Intentionally left blank] 2.5, 2
640x360 [Intentionally left blank] 1.75, 0.65
352x288 1.95, 1.1, 0.5, 0.25 1.3, 0.3
176x144 [Intentionally left blank] 0.1, 0.05
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 8

9. HD SVC ENCODING PERFORMANCE
 Evaluate different SVC layer configurations
 Rate control modes (constant bitrate vs. fixed
quantization parameter)
• Validate bitrate recommendations
 Combination of spatial and quality scalability (multiple
resolutions & multiple quality layers)
• Pack everything into one stream or prefer one stream
per resolution?
 Number of quality layers
• How many layers are useful?
 Requantization of quality layers for fixed QP mode
(deltaQP between layers)
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 9

10. Industry
solutions
HD SVC ENCODING SETUP
 4 test sequences (1080p, 25 fps)
 PedestrianArea, Dinner, DucksTakeOff, CrowdRun
 4 test scenarios
 2 quality metrics
 PSNR
 Video Quality Metric (VQM): Better correlation with human
visual system
 4 encoders
 JSVM (i.e., MPEG reference software)
 MainConcept
 Vanguard Software Solutions (VSS)
 bSoft
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 10

11. ENCODER COMPARISON &
RATE CONTROL MODES
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 11
PSNR VQM
fixed QP
CBR

12. 1920x10801280x720352x288176x144
ENCODER COMPARISON & BITRATE VALIDATION
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 12

13. COMBINING SPATIAL & QUALITY
SCALABILITY
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 13
960x528 1920x1056single stream

14. NUMBER OF QUALITY LAYERS
 Avg. bitrate
overhead per layer:
 JSVM: 11.7%
 MainConcept: 15.2%
 VSS: 19.7%
 bSoft: 8.2%
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 14
1 layer
2 layers
3 layers
4 layers

15. REQUANTIZATION OF QUALITY LAYERS
 Bitrate distance between quality layers
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 15
VQM VQM vs. PSNR


16. CONCLUSIONS
 Investigated industry AVC encoding guidelines
 Devised SVC bitrate recommendations
 Stable quality at all resolutions
 Number of quality layers influences coding overhead
 Several configurations and encoders evaluated
 Future Work
 Integration in end-to-end streaming system
 Performance studies of Scalable HEVC (SHVC)
Follow-up paper targeting adaptive HTTP streaming:
M. Grafl et al., "Hybrid Scalable Video Coding for HTTP-based Adaptive Media Streaming
with High-Definition Content", Proc. IEEE WoWMoM, Madrid, Spain, June 2013.
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 16

17. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Questions?
Michael Grafl et al. SVC Guidelines & Performance Evaluations for Adaptive Media Delivery of HD Content 17
http://itec.aau.at/~mgrafl | @MyKey_ – http://aau.at/tewi/inf/itec/mmc/ | @itecMMC