HEVC feature highlights

The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard is designed to achieve multiple goals, including coding efficiency, ease of transport system integration and data loss resilience, as well as implementability using parallel processing architectures.

• The core of the coding layer in previous standards was the macroblock, containing a 16×16 block of luma samples and, in the usual case of 4:2:0 color sampling, twocorresponding 8×8 blocks of chroma samples; whereasthe analogous structure in HEVC is the coding tree unit (CTU), which has a size selected by the encoder and can be larger than a traditional macroblock. The CTU consists of a luma CTB and the corresponding chroma CTBs and syntax elements. The size L×L of a luma CTB can be chosen as L = 16, 32, or 64 samples, with the larger sizes typically enabling better compression. HEVC then supports a partitioning of the CTBs into smaller blocks using a tree structure and quadtree-like signaling
• Coding units (CUs) and coding blocks (CBs): The quadtree syntax of the CTU specifies the size and positions of its luma and chroma CBs. The root of the quadtree is associated with the CTU. Hence, the size of the luma CTB is the largest supported size for a luma CB. The splitting of a CTU into luma and chroma CBs is signaled jointly. One luma CB and ordinarily two chroma CBs, together with associated syntax, form a coding unit (CU). A CTB may contain only one CU or may be split to form multiple CUs, and each CU has an associated partitioning into prediction units (PUs) and a tree of transform units (TUs)
• Prediction units and prediction blocks (PBs): The decision whether to code a picture area using interpicture or intrapicture prediction is made at the CU level. A PU partitioning structure has its root at the CU level. Depending on the basic prediction-type decision, the luma and chroma CBs can then be further split in size and predicted from luma and chroma prediction blocks (PBs). HEVC supports variable PB sizes from 64×64 down to 4×4 samples.
• TUs and transform blocks: The prediction residual is coded using block transforms. A TU tree structure has its root at the CU level. The luma CB residual may be identical to the luma transform block (TB) or may be further split into smaller luma TBs. The same applies to the chroma TBs. Integer basis functions similar to those of a discrete cosine transform (DCT) are defined for the square TB sizes 4×4, 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32. For the 4×4 transform of luma intrapicture prediction residuals, an integer transform derived from a form of discrete sine transform (DST) is alternatively specified.
• Motion compensation: Quarter-sample precision is used for the MVs, and 7-tap or 8-tap filters are used for interpolation of fractional-sample positions (compared to six-tap filtering of half-sample positions followed by linear interpolation for quarter-sample positions in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC). Similar to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC,multiple reference pictures are used. For each PB, either one or two motion vectors can be transmitted, resulting either in unipredictive or bipredictive coding, respectively. As in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, a scaling and offset operation may be applied to the prediction signal(s) in a manner known as weighted prediction
• Intrapicture prediction: The decoded boundary samples
• of adjacent blocks are used as reference data for spatial prediction in regions where interpicture prediction is not performed. Intrapicture prediction supports 33 directional modes (compared to eight such modes in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC), plus planar (surface fitting) and DC (flat) prediction modes. The selected intrapicture prediction modes are encoded by deriving most probable modes (e.g., prediction directions) based on those of previously decoded neighboring PBs
• Quantization control: As in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, uniform reconstruction quantization (URQ) is used in HEVC, with quantization scaling matrices supported for the various transform block sizes.
• Entropy coding: Context adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) is used for entropy coding. This is similar to the CABAC scheme in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, but has undergone several improvements to improve its throughput speed (especially for parallel-processing architectures) and its compression performance, and to reduce its context memory requirements
• In-loop deblocking filtering: A deblocking filter similar to the one used in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is operated within the interpicture prediction loop. However, the design is simplified in regard to its decision-making and filtering proce
• Sample adaptive offset (SAO): A nonlinear amplitude mapping is introduced within the interpicture prediction loop after the deblocking filter. Its goal is to better reconstruct the original signal amplitudes by using a look-up table that is described by a few additional parameters that can be determined by histogram analysis at the encoder side.
• Tiles: The option to partition a picture into rectangular regions called tiles has been specified. The main purpose of tiles is to increase the capability for parallel processing rather than provide error resilience. Tiles are independently decodable regions of a picture that are encoded with some shared header information. Tiles can additionally be used for the purpose of spatial random access to local regions of video pictures. A typical tile configuration of a picture consists of segmenting the picture into rectangular regions with approximately equal numbers of CTUs in each tile. Tiles provide parallelism at a more coarse level of granularity (picture/subpicture), and no sophisticated synchronization of threads is necessary for their use
• Wavefront parallel processing: When wavefront parallel processing (WPP) is enabled, a slice is divided into rows of CTUs. The first row is processed in an ordinary way, the second row can begin to be processed after only two CTUs have been processed in the first row, the third row can begin to be processed after only two CTUs have been processed in the second row, and so on. The context models of the entropy coder in each row are inferred from those in the preceding row with a two-CTU processing lag. WPP provides a form of processing parallelism at a rather fine level of granularity, i.e., within a slice. WPP may often provide better compression performance than tiles (and avoid some visual artifacts that may be induced by using tiles)

-- All from IEEE papar "overview of HEVC standard"