Subjective performance evaluation of the SVC extension of H.264/AVC

This contribution presents results of the MPEG verification test that was carried out for the new Scalable Video Coding (SVC) Amendment of H.264/AVC. The test consisted of a series of subjective comparisons of SVC and single layer H.264/AVC coding for different application scenarios including conversational applications, broadcasting over mobile channels, and HD broadcasting. The results show that a reasonable degree of spatial and quality scalability can be supported with a bit rate overhead of less than or about 10% and an indistinguishable visual quality compared to the state of the art single layer coding. This paper describes the coding conditions, the test procedure, and presents the results of the SVC verification test.