Wavelet Based Scalable Video Coding: a

Comparative Study
Yogananda Patnaik and Dipti Patra, Member, IEEE

Abstract-- Scalable video coding provides a competent means to

transmit a video at different resolutions. The basic idea is passing
of compressed data in terms of layers, which consists of a single
base layer, and one or many enhancement layers. By decoding
the base layer, lower resolution/quality video is produced, and by
decoding the enhancement layers higher quality video is
produced. Scalability is obtaining a video, at varying
resolution/quality, by encoding or decoding a video sequence. To
achieve spatial and temporal decomposition of the input video
sequence, wavelet transform combined with motion compensated
temporal filtering (MCTF) is carried out in this paper. To
remove redundancy, the motion vectors and wavelet coefficients
are compressed followed by a bit stream representation giving
rise to a layered representation. A base layer with two
enhancement layers is taken which is verified for four different
wavelet based compression methods, namely SPIHT-3D, SPIHT,
STW and EZW. SPIHT-3D is considered to be the best among
these.
Index TermsEZW, MCTF, Scalable video coding (SVC),
SPIHT, SPIHT-3D, STW, Wavelet scalable video coding (WSVC).

I. INTRODUCTION

EVELOPMENT in video coding technology along with

the rapid expansion in network infrastructure, storage
capacity, and computing power are the motivating factors
for ever-increase in the number of video applications [1].
Users may attempt to access the multimedia content and
interact from different terminals via different networks such
as: internet and video transmission, handheld devices,
multimedia broadcasting, and video services over wireless
channels with different resolutions. Therefore, scalability is
the only solution to overcome this problem. Scalability
enables removal of portions of video bit streams, for
adjustment to diverse demands of end users, at varying
network conditions and capacities. Scalable Video Coding
(SVC) finds its application in video broadcasting, error
protection and surveillance systems.
In case of non-scalable video coding the content of the
video is encoded independent of actual channel characteristics
where total available bandwidth is simply divided depending
Yogananda Patnaik is a Doctoral Research scholar in the Department of
Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008,
India (e-mail: ypatnaiknitrkl@gmail.com).
Prof Dipti Patra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical
Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India (email: dpatra@nitrkl.ac.in).

978-1-4799-4939-7/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

on the quality desired for each independent layer that needs to

be coded. On the contrary SVC is encoded only once, by
removing certain layers or bits from the single video stream
[2]. By using this technique spatial resolutions and or temporal
resolutions could be accomplished with different qualities.
SVC includes extraction of video of many resolutions or
qualities in the form a coded bit stream from a single bit
stream. Different basic SVC types include SNR scalability,
spatial scalability and temporal scalability. Scalable coding
have to support combinations of these three basic scalability
functionalities.
Wavelet transform plays a vital role in video compression
due to its compaction as well as de-correlation properties [3].
The most significant advantage of the wavelet transform is its
inherent scalability. Wavelet transform can be applied on
single frames, as a 2D transform on image pixels or on motion
compensated frame. On the other hand it can be used as 3D
transform on group of frames in a video sequence. The
application of wavelet transform can be used in video
compression performance, which enables selection of desired
bit assignment, rate optimization and progressive transmission
functionalities. Wavelet transform based video coding consists
of five steps: three
stage motion estimation and
compensation, adaptive wavelet transform, multi stage
quantization, Zero tree coding and intelligent bit rate control.
It generally tries to convert an image signal into a set of
coefficients, which correspond, to scaled space representations
at multiple resolutions and frequency segments. Data
compaction and bit allocation can be achieved more
powerfully by arranging Wavelet coefficients in a hierarchical
data structure. Quantization reduces the data rate at the cost of
some distortions. Entropy coding encodes the quantized
coefficients into a set of compact binary bit streams.
The revolution in video coding based on wavelet started
with the work of Ohm in [4], who presented in 1994 the first
application of the filtering scheme t+2D with a motion
compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) allowing to take into
account motion in the decorrelation of video frames. This
model became the outline for all wavelet-based coders.
Scalable video coding is the scalable extension of the hybrid
video coding standard (H.264/MPEG-4) and Advanced Video
Coding (H.264/AVC), as in [5]. The bit stream of scalable
video coding is structured in a base layer that resembles non
scalable profile of H.264/AVC, which corresponds to the
lowermost quality/resolution. To the reconstructed base layer
with various enhancement layers adds the different types of
spatial, temporal, and /or SNR quality. An alternative to
block-based coding is Wavelet-based scalable video coding
(W-SVC) solutions have been developed in [6], [7] . To
achieve spatial and temporal decomposition of the input video
sequence, wavelet transform combined with motion

compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) is done here. To

remove redundancy the motion vectors and wavelet
coefficients are compressed followed by a bit stream
representation giving rise to a layered representation.
The paper is organized in the following manner: Section II
presents the design framework of W-SVC. Section III presents
different compression methods. Section IV deals with
performance evaluation and comparison. Final section
concludes the paper with future scope.

applied to perform the MCTF. 5/3 MCTF consist of prediction

from two reference frames, both just before and just after the
target frames. Fig. 2, shows the MCTF structure of the (5/ 3)
wavelet [8], [9].
Frame0

Frame1

Frame2

Frame3

Frame4

II. DESIGN FRAMEWORK OF W-SVC

Level1

A. Main Modules of SVC

The W-SVC has three blocks namely:
Encoder: the encoder encodes the input that gives bit stream.
Extractor: function of this block is to reduce the bit stream as
per the requirements of scalability and to create the modified
bit stream and its description. The resultant bit stream is
scalable and is given to the extractor again for adapting. This
type of setup is called multipoint adaptation in which the
modified bit stream is fed to the adjacent network node.
Decoder: this block function is decoding of modified bit
streams.
B. Structure of W-SVC
The structure of SVC [8] mainly consists of spatial wavelet
transform using wavelets and temporal decomposition with
wavelets. By using mixtures of spatial, temporal transform and
3D bit plane coding techniques, high efficiency coding can be
achieved. The resulting multiresolution structure from 2D sub
band coding and MCTF empowers spatial and temporal
scalability. Bit plane coding gives SNR scalability. This
depends on the order of spatial and temporal decomposition.
There are two types of non-redundant SVC architectures
namely t+2D-temporal transform followed by the spatial
transform and 2D+t- that is spatial followed by temporal
wavelet transform, producing a set of spatial and temporal
sub-bands. Fig. 1 depicts the structure of wavelet based SVC
[8], [9].
Bit
stream

L Level2

5/3
MCTF

Fig.1.The Structure of W- SVC

2D
DWT

3D SPIHT/
SPIHT

Multi-layer
motion
coding
with spatial
& quality
scalability

C. Motion compensated Temporal Filtering (MCTF)

To achieve temporal scalability MCTF is frequently used.
The SVC extension, like regular H.264/AVC, uses DCT for
the remaining frames. Whether MCTF is used in combination
with DCT or wavelet transforms, the (5/3) wavelet is often

Level3

L
Fig.2.Structure for 3 level 5/3 MCTF
TABLE I
SCALABILITY ASPECT FOR DIFFERENT VIDEO CODING STANDARDS

Video codec

Scalability Aspect

MPEG-1

No support

MPEG-2

H.264/AVC

Layered
scalability
(spatial,
temporal, SNR)
MPEG-4 Layered and fine
granular
scalability
(spatial,
temporal, SNR)
Fully scalable extension

W-SVC

Fully scalable

Entropy
Coding
Spatio Temporal
Transform

MPEG-4

Video
Frame

Level0

Ln denotes the low-pass frames at decomposition level n, Hn

denotes the high-pass frame and, level 0 is the original frame.
For every odd numbered frame, a high-pass frame is predicted
from the adjacent even-numbered frames. The even index
frame is updated, using the two nearby high-pass frames to
generate a low-pass frame. From these generated low pass
frames, a new decomposition level can then be estimated. A
new level of temporal scalability is made available for each
decomposition level. Prior to the prediction and update,
motion compensation is performed to reduce temporal
redundancy [10]. When MCTF is followed by wavelet
decomposition of the frames, the scheme is referred to as

t+2D. This way the MCTF offers temporal scalability, while

the 2D wavelet offers resolution and peak signal-to-noise ratio
(PSNR) scalability. The scalability aspect in existing video
standards is illustrated in Table 1.
III. WAVELET VIDEO COMPRESSION METHODS
Different popular wavelet compression methods are Set
partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT), 3D-SPIHT,
Embedded Zero Tree (EZW) and Spatial Orientation Tree
Wavelet (STW).
A. Set partitioning in hierarchical trees:
The SPIHT algorithm [10], [11] consists of three steps: 1)
pointing out sets in spatial-orientation trees 2) dividing the
coefficients in these trees into sets with bit plane
representation of their magnitudes considering the highest
significant bit; and 3) remaining highest bit plane is coded and
transmitted first. Spatial orientation trees are groups of
wavelet transform coefficients organized into trees with lowest
frequency or sub band or is the root and higher frequency sub
bands are with the offspring in the lowest frequency or
coarsest scale sub band is with the offspring.
B. 3D-SPIHT:
The extended version of 2D SPIHT is the 3-D SPIHT [11],
[12] scheme possessing the same three characteristics. 1) By
arranging partially with the magnitude of the 3-D wavelet
transformed video using a 3-D set partitioning algorithm; 2)
transmission of refinement bits in an ordered bit plane; and 3)
utilization of self-similarity across spatio-temporal orientation
trees.
C. Embedded Zero Tree (EZW)
EZW Codec [13], [14] consists of a coder and decoder an
EZW coder and an EZW decoder. The EZW coder takes a
wavelet transformed input image and a symbol stream. The
decoder does the reverse thing. The EZW codec is the
amalgamation of two methods: the zero tree encoding and the
second one is successive approximation quantization
D. Spatial Orientation Tree Wavelet (STW) [15].
For speed improvement the algorithm avoids the use of
multiple passes of the bit plane coding. Wavelet coefficients
with dynamic ranges are coded efficiently. The algorithm
avoids the multiple passes of bit-plane coding. This ordered
dynamic range coding naturally allows resolution scalability
of a wavelet-transformed image. The dynamic range of energy
in each subset is predicted based on the dynamic range of
energy of parent set.

IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

A. Performance measures/Quality measures
The above wavelet compression methods are verified with
various performance metrics. The most important one among
them is Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) which defines the
quality. Some other quality measures include Mean Square

Error (MSE) and Compression Ratio (CR), which gives the

quantity of compression embedded in the coding process. It is
observed that PSNR and Compression ratios are inversely
linked with each other.
Mean Square Error (MSE): It is defined as the average or
aggregate of squares of the error between two images or
frames.
Monochrome image MSE is given by
2
1 N N
(1)
MSE= 2 ( X ( i, j ) Y ( i, j ) )
N i j
Colour image MSE is given by
2
2
1 N N
MSE= 2 [( r ( i, j ) r * ( i, j ) ) + ( g ( i, j ) g * ( i, j ) )
N i j

( b ( i , j ) b ( i, j ) )
*

(2)

Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR): Usually Mean Square Error is

expressed in terms of a Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) which is
specified in decibels (dB) as the ratio of desired image
variance ( 2 ) to the average image variance ( e2 )
SNR= 10 log10

2
e2

(3)

Where 2 is the variance of the desired image and e2 is

average variance.
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR): Peak Signal to Noise
Ratio is determined as the ratio of the signal variance to the
reconstruction error variance.
2552
(4)
PSNR = 10 log10 2
e
Compression Ratio (CR): Compression ratio is determined
as the ratio of the original image size to that of compressed
image size.
original image size
Compression Ratio=
(5)
Compressed image size
B. Simulation Results
This section deals with the experimental results which
were obtained for different compression methods like
SPIHT, SPIHT-3D, EZW, STW with different standard
video sequences namely Akiyo, Carphone, City, Foreman,
Bus, Crew, Coastguard, Mobile, and Mother Daughter,
Miss America. In this simulation initially a YUV video
sequence is taken with Quantization Q=1 and the number of
levels =3. Three layers are being considered a base layer
and two enhancement layers. The initial video is being
resized.
The size of the base layer, and the two
Enhancement layers are (128X128), (256X256), (512X512),
respectively

X1

TH

Fig.3. 30 FRAME of all the video sequences showing the Base Layer,
Enhancement Layer-1 and Enhancement Layer-2.

Wavelet transform along with motion-compensated

temporal filtering (MCTF) is carried out to achieve a
spatial-temporal decomposition of the input video sequence.
Then to remove redundancy the motion vectors and wavelet
coefficients are compressed followed by a bit stream
representation giving rise to a layered representation. The
wavelet considered here is Bior2.2. Different performance
measures such as MSE, PSNR, and CR are calculated for
quality measurement. 30 frames are considered in our
simulation. Likewise, this is carried out for all the video
sequences. From Table 2 and Fig. 4, it can be easily assured
that for most of the video sequence the compression ratio
CR is high in case of SPIHT-3D hence this compression
method is the best among the others. The First column (A,
D, G, J, M, P, S, V, Y) of Fig. 3, shows the base layer
resolution and a second column (B, E, H, K, N, Q, T, W, Z)
shows the Enhancement layer-1 (EL-1) resolution and the
third column (C, F, I, L, O, R, U, X, X1) shows
Enhancement layer-2 (EL-2) resolution. The simulations
were carried out using MATLAB-7 (2012) programming
language and was accomplished with a Pentium Intel CORE
i7 processor, 2.4 GHz CPU with 2GB RAM.
TABLE II
PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT VIDEO SEQUENCE

EL-1

CR

Carphone_qcif
(176x144)
FOREMAN
BUS_CIF
CREW
COASTGUARD

EL-1

EL-2

SPIH 452.83 9.80

1.01
T-3D
SPIH 431.1 5.99
0.47
T
EZW 6.325 4.06 0.322
STW 14.27 3.63 0.331
SPIH 281.9 9.05 0.627
T-3D
SPIH 24.56 5.20 0.482
T
EZW 6.069 5.90 0.502
STW 16.60 5.75 0.480
SPIH 20.25 55.3 37.90
T-3D
8
SPIH 40.55 38.2 35.38
T
0
EZW 11.42 46.5 36.63
9
STW 32.05 32.9 31.78
0
SPIH 325.7 10.3 0.832
T-3D
5
SPIH
34.6 8.67 0.699
T
7
EZW
28.3 14.0 0.843
3
1
STW
25.3 6.91 0.559
9
SPIH
300. 101. 20.40
T-3D
0
10
SPIH
17.8 68.9 17.97
T
4
7
EZW
12.7 83.3 16.9
9
4
STW 9.726 80.2 19.4
1
SPIH 317.6 24.2 15.7
T-3D
6
SPIH
27.2 19.4 14.254
T
8
9
EZW
8.19 17.1 16.6
1
9
STW
20.0 17.0 15.8
9
3
SPIH 147.6 21.5 1.877
T-3D
8
SPIH
40.2 14.5 1.11
T
9
4
EZW
12.6 14.0 1.01
6
8
STW 30.71 10.5 0.711
3

21.7

39.8

51.8

35.0

41.8

52.82

3.89

40.2
36.7
22.4

42.6
42.8
38.1

53.23
53.39
49.11

3.96
3.73
3.98

34.1

40.2

50.98

3.54

40.0
35.9
25.6

40.2
40.2
31.0

50.88
50.84
32.00

3.73
3.54
2.52

31.8

32.5

32.91

2.39

37.3

32.0

32.22

2.47

33.0

32.9

32.52

2.29

23.3

37.8

49.01

3.15

32.8

39.3

50.58

2.79

33.9

39.2

2.92

34.2

39.8

24.7

27.6

35.5

29.6

50.0
4
50.8
8
35.0
9
35.98

36.9

29.4

38.2

29.8

22.2

34.6

34.1

35.5

39.3

36.5

4.13

MISS AMERICA

City

BL

MOBILE

Akiyo_Qcif
(176x144)

EL-2

SPI
HT3D
SPI
HT
EZ
W
STW

100.9

12.5

1.96

28.6

36.7

44.885

3.9

22.30

10.4

1.65

34.6

37.6

45.526

3.6

7.86

9.52

1.6

39.5

38.2

45.900

3.5

15.73

8.30

1.54

36.0

38.6

46.0

SPI
HT3D
SPI
HT
EZ
W
STW

369.2 205.96

48.14

23.0 25.331

31.75

3.3
7
2.26
30

SPI
HT3D
SPI
HT
EZ
W
STW

61.87

99.2

24.1

30.2

27.9

33.4

46.50

105.

27.6

31.4

26.3

32.77

41.95

157.
6

30.6

31.9

26.4

32.62

4.81

1.32

0.10

40.8

47.2

57.900

3.6

4.81

1.32

0.10

41.2

47.3

57.94

3.6

1.68

1.08

0.09

45.8

47.8

57.70

3.9

3.11

1.01

0.09

43.0

48.1

58.376

3.4

1.8
9
2.0
3
2.0
8

35.4

36.2

26.6

35.4

32.2

37.1

37.1

37.6

33.3

38.0

35.9
2
35.9
8
36.9
1
37.1
7
37.3
2
37.2
6
46.2

2.71
2.83
2.51
2.565
5
2.542
9
5.355
9
5.046
9
5.354
9
5.143
3
2.498

48.7 1.955
5
7
49.4 2.039
4
9
49.62 1.840
6

SPIHT 3D
SPIHT
EZW
STW

5
C o m p r e s s io n R a tio

BL

Average PSNR

MOTHER DAUGHTER

Compression
method

Video sequence

MSE

4
3
2
1
1

4
5
6
7
Different video sequence (order as per table2)

10

Fig.4. CR plot for different compression methods

V. CONCLUSION

This paper describes the general idea of different

compression methods used in Wavelet based Scalable Video
coding (W-SVC). The basic operational design of W-SVC is
discussed in detail. The scalability features and functionality
of a scalable coder in the existing standards are explained.
Initially to achieve spatial and temporal decomposition of the
input video sequence, wavelet transform combined with
motion compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) is carried out.
Here 5/3 MCTF is carried out followed by two dimensional
discrete wavelet transform. The motion vectors and wavelet
coefficients are compressed followed by a bit stream
representation giving rise to a layered representation is being
done to remove redundancy. The Comparison is carried out
for different compression methods by considering 10 different
video data sets. Out of the four methods it is observed that
SPIHT-3D outperforms the others with respect to MSE,
Average PSNR and compression ratio. This work can be
extended towards development of better MCTF technique as

well as to incorporate the performance indices like SSIM and

FSIM.
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[6]

[7]

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