Forward-looking content aware encoding for next generation UHD, HDR, WCG, and HFR
Thomas Guionnet, Mickael Raulet, Thomas Burnichon
As we envision a world of life-like TV, enhanced in all possible degrees of freedom, immersive UHD-2/8K high dynamic range (HDR) wide color gamut (WCG) high frame rate (HFR) are knocking at our doors. Although technology is improving at a constant pace, processing and transmitting such an amazing amount of information remains an incredible challenge. The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) transmitted an ultrahigh-definition (UHD) HDR live feed of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 2018 World Cup at 36 Mb/s, however, the ATEME TITAN Live encoder does it already at 22 Mb/s and lower. Even though the future International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication (ITU-T) International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission’s (ISO/IEC) versatile video coding (VVC) is promising a 50% coding efficiency gain compared to high-efficiency video coding (HEVC), compression will not be enough, thus leading to strategies like UHD forum Phase B guidelines recommending content-aware encoding. This paper shows how the future challenges of video compression can be met by leveraging both expertise in optimized compression and the latest advances in artificial intelligence, thus spending exactly the right amount of bits on each piece of video information. A practical implementation of content-aware encoding adapted to upcoming video formats is described, and results and analysis are provided.
Print ISSN
1545-0279
Electronic ISSN
2160-2492
Published
2020-08
Content type
Original Research
Keywords
8K, artificial intelligence (AI), content adaptive encoding, high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR), over the top (OTT), high-efficiency video coding (HEVC), ultrahigh definition (UHD), versatile video coding (VVC), video compression, video quality, wide color gamut (WCG)