On the influence of motion vector precision limiting in scalable video coding

Recent studies on scalable video coding have not only substantiated the need for such technology but also made evident that many related problems remain open and need to be tackled if truly scalable video coding is to be achieved. One of these challenges relates to the coding of motion vectors. In conventional coders motion vectors are treated and coded in a nonprogressive manner. Since scalable video coding targets decoding at several resolutions and a wide range of quality levels, the motion information needs to be encoded in an adaptive way. We propose a simple, yet efficient, strategy for scalable motion vector coding. The results show improvements of resolution scalability performance at lower-bit rates, while overcoming any negative influence at high resolutions and bit-rates.