A mode-mapping and optimized MV conjunction based MGS-scalable SVC to AVC IPPP transcoder

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is an extension of H.264/AVC, aiming to provide the ability to adapt to heterogeneous environments. It offers great flexibility for bitstream adaptation in multi-point applications such as videoconferencing. However, transcoding between SVC and AVC is necessary due to the existence of legacy AVC-based systems. This paper proposes a 3-stage fast SVC-to-AVC transcoder for medium-grain quality scalability (MGS). Hierarchical-P structured SVC bitstream is transcoded into IPPP structured AVC bitstream with multiple reference frames. In the first stage, mode decision is accelerated by proposed SVC-to-AVC mode mapping scheme. In the second stage, INTER motion estimation is accelerated by an optimized motion vector (MV) conjunction method to predict the MV with a reduced search range. In the last stage, Hadamard-based all zero block (AZB) detection is utilized for early termination. Simulation results show that proposed transcoder achieves very similar coding efficiency as the optimal result, but with averagely 92.3% computational time saving.