TRAFFIC AWARE VIDEO CODING USING SCALABLE VIDEO

CODING (SVC)
RAHIMUNISA NAGMA
Department of ECE, HKBKCE, Nagawara, Bangalore, Karnataka-560045, India

DR. TC MANJUNATH
Department of ECE, HKBKCE, Nagawara, Bangalore, Karnataka-560045, India

ABSTRACT: Scalable Video Coding is a type of compression technique in which the video files
are transmitted effectively over low bandwidth and lossy networks. An SVC video stream is made
up of multiple layers with varying degrees of quality. First is the base layer and the next are
enhancement layers with incremental increase in quality and layers combined in hierarchical
fashion. In this paper we evaluate the effects of scalability with no reference or reduced reference
video quality metrics and comparison between various video quality metrics done taking different
types of videos using SVC.

KEYWORDS: H.264 SVC, PSNR, SSIM, Blocking, Blurring, Temporal scalability, Spatial
scalability, Quality scalability.

INTRODUCTION

Demonstration of video compression capability have been done regarding significant

improvements achieved in the same field with the introduction of various standards for video
coding. The Scalable video Coning(SVC) has also been standardized by the Joint Video Team of
the ISO/IEC MPEG and the ITU-T VCEG. SVC is the extension of the already available video
standard H.264/AVC. SVC enables the transmission of partial bit streams and decoding them, that
results in providing of video services with reduced temporal or spatial resolutions, at the same time
reducing the reconstruction quality that is high as compared to the partial bit streams rate. Hence
SVC provides adaptation of power, bit rate and format and also provides graceful degradation in
environments with lossy transmission. Relative to the scalable profiles of previous video coding
standards, there are significant improvements in coding efficiency achieved by SVC along with an
improved degree of supported scalability. The main objective of the proposed dissertation work is
to realize the traffic aware video coding using Scalable Video Coding.

PROPOSED WORK

In the proposed work we use a reduced-reference method instead of a full-reference method in

order to get the quantitative measure of video quality at the end user side. In the proposed work,
we are aiming in achieving scalability of the video stream in three different dimensions namely
Spatial, Temporal and Quantization through degradation by considering varying internet speeds.
Here we provide a feedback to the network service provider about the loss perceptually introduced
by the wireless transmission network. The most common scalability modes are: Temporal, Spatial
and Quality scalability. In Temporal scalability the subsets of video bit streams have reduced
frame rate (frame resolution). In Spatial scalability the subset of video bit streams have reduced
picture size (spatial resolution). Quality scalability is commonly referred to as signal-to-noise-
ratio(SNR) or fidelity scalability.
 Figure 1: Proposed Block Diagram

Encoder
The source video is taken and prediction of video is carried out. H.264 SVC involves intra-
prediction and inter-prediction. In Intra-prediction prediction, prediction of macroblock is done by
referring to only current slice and not referring any outside data Inter prediction is done referring
to previously coded frames using motion compensated prediction. Inter prediction involves
prediction region selection, prediction block generation and then subtraction of this from original
block of samples to give a residual which is then coded and transmitted.

Figure 2: General H.264 Encoder block diagram

Transform and Quantization

The transform and quantization in H.264/SVC are designed to minimize computational
complexity, to avoid mismatch of the encoder-decoder and to be suitable for implementation using
limited-precision integer arithmetic.

Entropy Encode
Prior to entropy coding, the blocks of transform co-efficients are converted into a linear array. The
intention of scan order is to group together the non-zero quantized co-efficients called significant
co-efficients. For a typical progressive frames block, the non-zero co-efficients tend to be grouped
or clustered around top-left DC co-efficient. A zigzag scan order is most efficient in this case.
Example for a progressive scan order for 4x4 blocks is shown below:

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 Figure 3: Zigzag coding pattern

Decoder
The compressed H.264 bitstream is given to the H.264 SVC video decoder which extracts the
information such as quantized transform co-efficients, prediction information, etc., by decoding
each of the syntax. Later this information is used to reverse the coding process and recreate video
sequence.

Figure 4: General H.264 Decoder block diagram

PROJECT SIMULATION REPORT

The dissertation work have started with the implementation of a H.264 SVC encoder part and
H.264 SVC decoder part. Subjective and Objective measurement of video quality is carried out.
Subjective Measurement of video quality: It is based on or influenced by personal opinions. It
does not give a quantitative measure of the quality but defines the quality in terms of words such
as good, better, best, etc.
Objective measure of video quality: It gives a quantitative measure of video quality with a little
complexity and cost as compared to subjective measurement. In Objective measure of video
quality we have Full-reference evaluation and Reduced-reference evaluation of video. Example of
Full-reference evaluation methods are:
PSNR: It is the ratio of useful energy to the error energy.
PSNR db=10log10 (2^n-1)^2eqn (1)
MSE
It is simple to calculate and requires very less time.widely used to compare compressed and
decompressed video image quality.
SSIM: It is based on measuring the three components like luminance similarity, contrast similarity
and structural similarity and then combining these to give the result.
SSIM(i)=((2mxmy)+c1)((2covxy)+c2) ...eqn(2)
(((mx)^2+c1)varx+vary+c2)
Examples of reducedreference evaluation are:
Blocking: These are the square or rectangular shaped distortion areas in an image. This kind of
distortion is likely to be seen at boundary between blocks that contain coded co-efficients or

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boundary of an intra code macro block. Block distortion is likely to be more significant when
quantization parameter (QP) is higher.
Blurring: This is one of the degradation parameter. Blurring increases with increase in
compression, as there is a reduction in contrast between neighboring pixels.

SIMULATION RESULTS

Figure 5: The simulation waveforms of the metrics

Figure 6: Comparison waveform of SNR versus MSE

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 .
Figure 7: Comparison waveform of SNR versus PSNR

The above snapshots in Figure 5 shows the simulation waveforms of the four metrics plotted
against the number of frames at a condition when noise is present at the decoder side. The Figure 6
shows the behavior of Mean Squared Error(MSE) when SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) is varied and
Figure 7 shows the behavior of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio(PSNR) when SNR is varied. From the
comparison waveforms, tables for different types of video clips (screw video clip, rhinos video
clip and pets video clip) is shown below to know how the SNR value, MSE value and the PSNR
value will actually vary.

Table 1: Comparison table for Screw video clip.

SNR MSE PSNR
-20 .3050 11.8783
-15 .2916 12.3246
-10 .2761 12.8705
-5 .2407 14.2440
0 .1910 16.5544
5 .1163 21.5200
10 .0346 38.6449
15 .0018 63.1510

Table 2: Comparison table for Rhinos video clip.

SNR MSE PSNR
-20 .4794 7.3523
-15 .4640 7.6792
-10 .4365 8.2899
-5 .3897 9.4290
0 .3078 11.7833
5 .1863 16.8024
10 .0574 28.5847
15 .0023 61.1243

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 Table 3: Comparison table for Pets video clip.
SNR MSE PSNR
-20 .4796 7.3479
-15 .4645 7.6687
-10 .4355 8.3121
-5 .3890 9.4415
0 .3068 11.8617
5 .1867 16.7808
10 .0568 28.6786
15 .0024 60.1923

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

The H.264 SVC encoder and decoder parts are implemented. The two no-reference metrics
blocking and blurring are used to find out the effect on video quality as we progress through
degradation path for every scalable dimension. Also the effect on video quality in the presence of
loss is investigated for each scalable dimension. Our findings indicate that-as spatial resolution
decreases and the quantization decreases, the impact of loss on video quality is decreased. Also the
impact of loss in temporal degradation leads to a greater impact on video quality. This work can be
used as reference for selection of suitable dimensions to maximize the video quality when
constructing the SVC sequence layers and also to save the bandwidth to its largest amount.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We wish to acknowledge HKBK College of Engineering for providing the Infrastructure to carry
out the process of developing a soft core for Traffic aware video coding using Scalable Video
Coding(SVC).

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