Deliver High Quality High Performance HEVC via Intel® Media Server Studio

Deliver High Quality, High Performance HEVC via Intel® Media Server Studio
For Media Server Studio HEVC codec in each encoding mode, the 4 collected bitrates and corresponding 4
PSNRs (each corresponding to one Qp) are used in curve fitting to generate a continuous RD curve for
each encoding mode. Further, for each test sequence and for each Media Server Studio TU mode, the
corresponding Media Server Studio RD curve is compared to HM14 RD curve and a BD rate percentage is
computed that reflects the difference in quality between specific Media Server Studio TU mode with
respect to TU14 reference. The BD rate provides a measure of departure of Media Server Studio TU
mode’s quality in percentage bits with respect to the HM14 reference. For instance a BD rate percentage
of say 4% for Media Server Studio TU1 mode means that Media Server Studio HEVC TU1 mode in order to
provide the same objective quality as HM14 would require 4% additional bits. The HEVC provided macro
for BD rate calculation is shown in Appendix C.
Table 2A-2D show the measured BD rate percentage bitrate for each of luma and chroma components for
each test sequence of each test set of Table 0A-0D for each of 4 TU modes being evaluated. Fig. 6A-6D
compares the RD characteristics of two codecs for each test set for TU1 and TU4 modes where the
difference in quality is the highest and the lowest wrt HM14 reference.
For instance, Table 2A shows on UHD4K test set, the BD rate percentage difference of Media Server
Studio HEVC in various TU modes wrt HM14 reference. As can be observed on UHD4K test set, the
average luma BD rate percentage difference of Media Server Studio HEVC Codec over HM14 (an ideal
reference), is -0.05%, 17.65%, 33.57%, and 35.22% higher respectively in TU1, TU4, TU7, and TU7gacc modes.
This means that for UHD4K test set, the Media Server Studio codec as compared to HM14, requires
around 0% higher bitrate in TU1 mode, 18% higher bitrate in TU4 mode, 34% higher bitrate in TU7 mode,
and 35% higher bitrate in TU7gacc mode to achieve the same luma PSNR quality as HM14. Further as a
matter of reference, the HM14 codec is 100 to 3000 times slower (shown in the next section) as compared
to Media Server Studio HEVC codec depending on the TU setting used.
Table 2A Relative Quality Evaluation Results on UHD4K test set for Intel® Media Server Studio HEVC Software Codec
in TU1, TU4, TU7, and TU7gacc modes with respect to MPEG HEVC HM14 Codec
UHD4K Test
Sequence
TU1 BD rate, %age TU4 BD rate, %age TU7 BD rate, %age TU7gacc BD rate, %age
Y U V Y U V Y U V Y U V
1 Park_joy -0.18 1.92 -0.63 13.50 7.92 16.47 26.97 25.10 33.01 28.15 25.76 33.61
2 Ducks_take_off -0.93 6.81 9.79 15.92 -16.84 6.27 28.53 -0.84 23.39 30.00 0.62 25.80
3 CrowdRun 0.37 2.99 2.14 17.33 18.18 20.35 35.46 46.38 48.19 36.74 47.33 49.31
4 PeopleOnStreet 0.16 -7.15 -6.21 20.65 21.06 25.66 40.38 52.82 59.84 43.26 55.77 62.65
5 Traffic 0.31 -9.00 -15.63 20.86 16.15 23.76 36.52 41.70 42.65 37.96 42.62 42.98
6 Nebuta_Festival 6.91 47.06 42.79 20.02 16.68 5.40 46.90 33.35 16.72 47.68 32.44 16.53
Average -0.05 -0.89 -2.11 17.65 9.30 18.50 33.57 33.03 41.41 35.22 34.42 42.87
22
Further, Table 2A shows on UHD4K test set that Media Server Studio HEVC Codec TU1 mode with respect
to HM14 reference, results in biggest positive luma BD rate percentage difference (its worst case) on
Nebuta_Festival 1600p sequence and better than HM14 luma BD rate percentage difference (its best case)