Rate-distortion-complexity performance analysis of the SVC decoder

The scalable video coding extends the H.264/AVC video coding standard by providing temporal, spatial and quality scalability. A set of new tools, such as key picture and inter-layer prediction are introduced in SVC to improve either rate-distortion performance or error resilience. This paper evaluates the impact of these tools on the performance of an optimized SVC decoder, in terms of rate, distortion, and computational complexity. The results facilitate the decision making process of choosing suitable SVC configurations under different application scenarios.