Content adaptive quantization parameter cascading for random-access structure in HEVC

In high-efficiency coding (HEVC), the random-access structure (RAS) is employed due to its high coding efficiency and “random-access” performance. Pictures in RAS are assigned to different temporal layers. And how to select the QP for each temporal layer in quantization parameter cascading (QPC) technique is critical for improving the coding efficiency of RAS. In order to further improve the coding efficiency of RAS, a QPC technique considering the video content characteristics (denoted as VC-QPC for short) is proposed. In VC-QPC, motion and texture complexities of a video are used for predicting the optimal quantization parameter values of temporal layers. Compared with the method in the test model of HEVC, i.e., HM14.0, the BD-rate of proposed VC-QPC is −5.60% for RAS.