Inter-layer adaptive filtering for scalable extension of HEVC

This paper introduces a novel inter-layer adaptive filtering method for scalable extension of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, which is being developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC). The scalable extension of HEVC is currently utilizing an interlayer texture prediction method, in which the prediction of texture at enhancement layer is derived from the collocated reconstructions of base layer. The proposed method applies an adaptive filter to the reconstructions of base layer and generates the predictor of enhancement layer. It aims at enhancing the coding efficiency of enhancement layer by further reducing the redundant texture information in interlayer texture prediction. Two techniques are presented in this paper. The first one applies the adaptive filter to the reconstructions of base layer, which is followed by the fixed upsampling in spatial scalability. In the second one, an adaptive upsampling filter is further applied to filtered base layer reconstructions to generate the pixels at interpolated positions. Compared with the Scalable Mode under Consideration (SMuC) version 0.1.1 of HEVC scalable extension, average 0.8% and 3.2% bit-rate reductions are achieved for spatial scalability and SNR scalability respectively.