Motion compensation is provided by two new methods, Advanced Motion Vector Prediction (AMVP) and Merge Mode, both of which use indexed lists of neighboring and temporal predictors. AMVP uses motion vectors from neighboring prediction units, chosen from both spatial and temporal predictors, and Merge Mode uses motion vectors from neighboring blocks as predictors. To calculate motion vectors, Luma is filtered to quarter-pixel accuracy, using a high- precision 8-tap filter. Chroma is filtered with a one-eighth-pixel 4-tap filter. A motion-compensated region can be either single- or bidirectionally interpolated (one or two motion vectors and reference frames), and each direction can be individually weighted.

The JCT-VC team is also studying various new tools for adaptive quantization. After this last lossy coding step, lossless Context-adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (CABAC) is carried out, which is similar to AVC’s CABAC, but has been rearranged to allow for simpler and faster hardware decoding. Currently, the low- complexity entropy-coding technique called Context-Adaptive Variable-Length Coding (CAVLC), which was available as an option in AVC, is not available in HEVC.

With all of these improvements comes a price: Both encoding and decoding are significantly more complex, so we can expect more expensive processors on both sides. On the decoding side, this means a higher density of silicon and/or software, both requiring faster chips, and higher power consumption, but Moore’s Law should help. As for deployment in portable devices, it will be an interesting challenge to realize the efficiency benefits of HEVC in devices that are demanding increasing amounts of video content.

—Aldo Cugnini is a consultant in the digital television industry.