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Article | REF: TE5372 V1

HEVC (H.265) video compression format

Authors: Marc LEGER, Christophe NELSON, Jean-Noël GOUYET

Publication date: August 10, 2016

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ABSTRACT

This article describes the digital video compression format HEVC (high-efficiency video coding) also named H.265. After a short development history, a brief review of the principles underlying MPEG video picture coding is given. The main concepts of the HEVC compression format are then detailed, along with the tools used in the coding chain. After a presentation of the profiles and levels supported by the standard, performance is illustrated by tests results. To conclude, the main application domains and HEVC competitors are briefly presented.

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AUTHORS

  • Marc LEGER: Graduate of the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière - Camera operator, Vision engineer - Head of INA's video training program

  • Christophe NELSON: Diploma in Audiovisual and Computer Technologies for Education - Head of training in video techniques at INA

  • Jean-Noël GOUYET: Broadcast and multimedia digital technology training engineer - Former head of research at the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA)

 INTRODUCTION

This article describes the technical principles and tools, as well as the performance and applications of a new video compression format or "codec", HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), also standardized as H.265.

This development is taking place against a backdrop of increasing diversity in digital audiovisual -services, and the growing popularity of HD (High Definition) and UHD (Ultra High Definition) "4K" or soon "8K" video. In addition, the traffic generated by video applications for mobile and tablet devices, as well as the transmission capacities required by video-on-demand services, are a major challenge for today's digital networks. Last but not least, the desire for higher image quality and definition is growing for mobile applications.

To keep pace with these developments, since the introduction of the MPEG-2 compression format in 1992 for digital TV broadcasting and DVD-Video, engineers have continued to improve digital video compression techniques. Every 10 years or so, video encoding technologies take a quantum leap forward, improving algorithms to halve the bitrate required to distribute a video image of equal quality. After MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC, the latest generation is the HEVC/H.265 "codec", which promises greater efficiency than its predecessors.

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KEYWORDS

digital television   |   internet   |   discrete cosine transform   |   prediction   |   entropy coding   |   digital video coding   |   MPEG compression   |   HEVC

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