A new technique for quality scalable video coding with H.264

In this paper, we provide a technique that allows H264/AVC to achieve quality scalable coding by allowing the coder to produce different coded motion qualities. This technique is called block ordering scalability. It realizes scalability by exploiting the existing building blocks of the standard. It may need minor changes of the current standard, but in its simple form, presented here, it does not need any change at all. The blocks carrying the updating picture information are ordered according to their importance into different slices. This reordering allows realizing a gradual refinement of the quality of coded pictures. An implementation of such a system is achieved by analyzing the motion of a given picture to determine the most important blocks to code for basic quality and the less important ones used for enhancement. In this case, scalability affects the quality of the reproduced motion. This way of coding the enhancement blocks allows achieving rate-adaptive coding. Many experimental results that show the efficiency of the technique are provided.