Quantization effect on MRF performance for VVC encoder

For all hybrid digital video encoders, inter prediction module is considered to be a milestone for all video standards. It was improved by the final H266 known under the name of Versatile Video Coding (VVC). The Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) within the inter prediction module is an option proposed by VVC to predict the current frame from one or more previously coded frames belonging to two different lists. This technique improves the compression efficiency and lowers the bit-rate. In order to study in more detail its impact on the VVC encoder, this article suggests different MRF configurations by varying the number of reference frames in each list. For each configuration, statistical results indicating the impact of varying Quantization Parameter (QP) on encoder performance are presented. The results show that the number of MRF has more positive impact on the encoder performance in terms of bitrate and execution time for significant values of QP with no effect on the quality of the reconstructed video in terms of PSNR.