On the Coding Efficiency of MCTF Update Steps for Scalable Video Coding

It has been widely believed that motion-compensated update steps performed in the motion-compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) framework improve coding efficiency in comparison to conventional hybrid coding. However, the coding efficiency of MCTF update steps for scalable video coding has not been examined sufficiently in the past. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of the decoder side update steps by analyzing the effect of performing the inverse update steps at the decoder side. We demonstrate, by theoretical approach, that the MCTF update step at the decoder side does not contribute significantly to the coding efficiency, except at high spatial-temporal resolutions with high bit rates. The results in our study provide a theoretical justification for not including MCTF update steps in the decoding process for scalable video coding