High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut Video Coding in HEVC: Status and Potential Future Enhancements

As the video industry begins deployment of ultrahigh-definition TV in both professional and consumer markets, including support for higher dynamic range and wider color gamut services is considered essential within the industry. Higher dynamic range and wider color gamut offer end users a significantly enhanced viewing experience by supporting intensity ranges and colors unattainable in existing distribution ecosystems. In response to this trend, several standardization organizations have launched efforts to better enable these features in both short term and midterm. In this paper, we provide a survey of these standardization activities, with the specific goal of providing a summary of the underlying technologies. Our emphasis is on both existing and potential extensions to the High Efficiency Video Coding standard.