Simplified generalized residual prediction in scalable extension of HEVC

Scalable video coding (SVC), which is an extension of H.264/AVC video coding standard, was introduced to provide scalability in different dimensions for adaptation to heterogeneous network and terminals. After the finalization of the new video coding standard called High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), the effort of the standardization committee has been redirected to the investigation of the scalable extension of HEVC. In addition to the basic inter-layer texture prediction mechanism, several other coding tools were proposed for coding performance improvement. Among those coding tools, the one called generalized residual prediction (GRP) scheme achieves most significant coding gain while the consumption of computational power is also huge. In this paper, the GRP mechanism is formulated and analyzed in detail. In addition, the combination of GRP mechanism with merge mode in HEVC is proposed for simplification of the existing GRP mechanism. Results show a better trade-off could be achieved by greatly reducing computational complexity while maintaining most of the coding gain.