Intra-Frame Dyadic Spatial Scalable Coding Based on a Subband/Wavelet Framework for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Scalable Video Coding

This paper develops a new intra-frame dyadic spatial scalable coding framework based on a subband/wavelet coding approach for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 scalable video coding (SVC). It is the first attempt in the literature to join the subband filter banks with the traditional macroblock and DCT based video coding system. We demonstrate that the current H.264 coding tools and syntax set can efficiently work together with the traditional subband filter banks for providing the improved efficiency for intra-frame dyadic spatial scalable coding. More importantly, unlike the classical wavelet coding, the proposed framework still allows the down-sampling filter to be flexibly designed to generate the ideal low resolution video for target applications. The proposed wavelet tool has been adopted by the JSVM for the next-phase SVC standard.