Bit-Depth Scalable Video Coding

Scalable video coding (SVC) is an extension of H.264/AVC, which is currently being developed by the Joint Video Team. SVC supports any combination of temporal, spatial, and SNR scalability, but there is no special treatment for the case that two or more different bit-depths have to be supported by the scalable bit-stream. There is a number of applications (especially in the HD area) which would benefit from a design where an H.264/AVC conforming base layer with a sample bit-depth of typically 8 bit is extended in a backwards compatible way by an higher bit-depth enhancement layer. In this paper we present new techniques which can be used to achieve bit-depth scalability and show experimental results.