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An efficient VC-1 to H.264 IPB-picture transcoder with pixel domain processing

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Abstract

VC-1 is one of the three video coding standards for Blu-ray DVD, which also includes MPEG-2 and H.264. In this paper, an efficient transcoding algorithm from VC-1 video to H.264 video is discussed, we present a transcoder that addresses I, P, B, and interlaced pictures. The main differences between the two standards are analyzed and a solution for transforming from one to the other is presented. The paper proposes a pixel domain transcoder which exploits the variable size transform used in VC-1 to select the variable block size for motion compensation in H.264. We also discuss transcoding of high profile video features; in particular, adaptive size transform and interlacing. Experimental results show that the pixel domain approach reduces computational complexity by more than 50 % as compared to a cascaded one with negligible drop in peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR).

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Author notes

  1. Jae-Beom Lee

    Present address: L33 Labs, Portland, OR, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, 95053, USA

    Maria Pantoja & Nam Ling

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA

    Hari Kalva

  3. Sarnoff Corporation, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Jae-Beom Lee

Authors
  1. Maria Pantoja
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  2. Nam Ling
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  3. Hari Kalva
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  4. Jae-Beom Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Pantoja.

ANNEX I—QP MAPPING

ANNEX I—QP MAPPING

In VC-1, QP (\(QP_{VC-1})\) has values that range from 1-31; in H.264 QP (\(QP_{H.264}\)) values range from 1-51. To find the relation between the QPs in both standards the following experiment was performed with several video sequences:

  1. 1.

    Compress a video sequence using VC-1 for all QPs possible, rate control turned off.

  2. 2.

    Compress the same video sequence as in Step 1 using H.264 for all QPs possible with rate control turned off.

  3. 3.

    Graph the bit-rate vs. QP for the two standards and obtain the relationship between \(QP_{VC-1}\) to \(QP_{H.264}\) using regression analysis.

We performed Steps 1–3 for different sequences to ensure repeatability of the results. From the experiments we conclude that:

  1. a)

    VC-1 can only achieve the same bit-rates as H.264 if the QP for H.264 ranges from 10 to 29.

  2. b)

    Using non-linear least squares regression we obtain the following polynomial to adjust the data:

    $$\begin{aligned} QP_{H.264} =a^*QP_{VC-1}^2 +b^*QP_{VC-1} +c. \end{aligned}$$

Here \(a = -0.02, b = 1.10\), and \(c = 9.92\). The coefficient of correlation is \(r = 0.985\).

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Pantoja, M., Ling, N., Kalva, H. et al. An efficient VC-1 to H.264 IPB-picture transcoder with pixel domain processing. Multidim Syst Sign Process 26, 555–574 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11045-013-0259-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11045-013-0259-y

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