Analysis of HEVC coding standard

HEVC video coding standard can achieve an average of 50% bit-rate saving, transmitting nearly the same visual quality, compared with the H.264/AVC High Profile. This paper focuses on the key features of the HEVC standard. Then it analyzes the complexity of the HEVC standard by profiling the HEVC reference software HM12.0 which is released by JCT-VC community with Intel Core i7 processor. The experiment covers different settings for a wide variety of video sequences, with the resolutions ranging from 240p to 1600p. The evaluation result shows that the HEVC standard can achieve a doubling in coding efficiency at the cost of increasing the complexity slightly. When the sequences are coded in all-intra or random-access configurations, intra prediction, loop filter, inverse transform and motion compensation are the most complex components for HEVC decoder. The motion compensation part should be given lots of consideration since it can take nearly half of the decoding time. The quantization parameter (QP) also has obvious influences on the complexity of the decoder. Besides, in practice, the HM decoder is not able to decode video content with 1080p or higher resolutions for real-time applications. © 2015 SERSC.