Madrid, (30/10/14).-

One year after its adoption, new video HEVC (H.265) encoding standard, continues arousing interest within the audiovisual industry, as it has been established in the exhibition and annual technical conference that the SMPTE was held from 21 to 24 October last in Hollywood, California (USA).

For the second consecutive year, leading SAPEC in the professional sector of audio and video, in collaboration with the Institute of telecommunications and applications Multimedia of the Universitat Politècnica de València (iTEAM-UPV), have participated as leading exponents of Spanish audiovisual technology, introducing a technological solution for the efficient utilization of the HEVC standard in contribution and exchange of content among producers servicesbroadcasters and operators.

 

Innovative architecture

In front of a large group of industry experts, SAPEC and iTEAM-UPV showed the benefits it can bring HEVC encoding of interlaced formats, especially for high definition 1080i format. Its relevance lies in the interlaced format continues to have today one strong presence both in the area of production of TV, where more than 80% of the contents are still produced in 1080i, as the field of broadcasting, where it is the dominant format in all HD platforms, and not forgetting the immense and valuable content on the existing HD filewhere the format is equally preferred against the progressive format (720 p or 1080 p).

Due to the absence of tools specific for coding interlaced mode presenting HEVC, there is great confusion in the industry relative to the capacity of HEVC to encode interlaced content. Sample of benefits it can bring HEVC in this area, DVB has recently approved a new version of its recommendation 101 154 TR with the aim to support with standard HEVC 1080i interlaced formats in their different frame-rates.

SAPEC and iTEAM-UPV presented a novel architecture that facilitates the implementation of the model of “Sequence-Adaptive Field – Frame'” or SAFF, which allows efficient coding with low delay-interlaced formats.

In order to analyze the efficiency of the model proposed in an encoder HEVC, were the results obtained on a broad set of sequences with different complexities time-space, using the new “Main 422 10b” profile of HEVC.

These results confirm that HEVC can reduce the bandwidth used currently by H.264 in their “High 422” profile to values higher than 60%, for sequences of high complexity (such as sports sequences) whereas for sequences of lower demand, as they can be contained animation, HEVC still get an efficiency greater than 30% compared to H.264 for interlaced formats.

Sapec, of the first companies in the world to implement technology HEVC

As final conclusion, SAPEC and iTEAM-UPV remarked that the new “Main 422 10-bit” of HEVC profile for professional applications, you can provide reductions of the substantial bandwidths that can be used by broadcasters and TV operators, both for contribution services and TV broadcast with the current high definition interlaced format.

Sapec is currently one of the first companies in the world to have professional encoders HEVC in real time, in which integrates this technology for the support of interlaced formats.

 

The paper

HEVC efficiency assessment for contribution services of interlaced content, witn Juan Jose Anaya (SAPEC, Spain) and Damian Ruiz (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain).

In January 2014 a new family of HEVC profiles named “Range Extensions”, have been approved in order to cover the needs of high quality production environments, such as primary distribution, contribution services, and edition/post-production. The new “Main 422@10” profile will become the successor of the successful “Hi422P” profile of the H.264/AVC, achieving a high efficiency for emerging formats beyond HD, such as the 4k and 8k formats. However HD interlaced content is nowadays the mainstream for broadcasting production, but HEVC profiles do not include specific tools for interlaced content as H.264/AVC did. This paper addresses the issues involved in HD interlaced contribution services under HEVC “Main 422@10” profile, with the aim to identify the true HEVC efficiency compared with Hi422P profile of H.264/AVC. The simulation results will report the bandwidth saving and the quality improvements, that broadcasters and network operators can achieve for HD interlacing encoding using new HEVC profiles.

 

Presenter bio: Damián Ruiz Coll received the M.S. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), Spain in 2000. He is PhD candidate in Computer Science, doing a doctoral research stay at the Florida Atlantic University (FAU), of United States, during 2012. Nowadays, he is working as a researcher at Mobile Communication Group (MCG) of the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM), and his research focuses on the real time optimization of HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), for broadcasting and mobile networks. He participates as a member of DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting), FOBTV (Future of Broadcast TV), and “Beyond HD” group of EBU (European Broadcasting Union). He has more than 15 years of experience as engineer at Public Spanish Broadcaster (RTVE), and he was involved in R&D projects, including collaborations with international committees as DVB, EBU, DigiTAG, and the “HDTV Spanish Forum” of Ministry of Industry. He has collaborated at several EBU video coding Test Plan for Video Quality Assessment of new generation of Production and Contribution codecs.