Evaluation of Low Complexity Enhancement Video Codec (LCEVC) with HEVC and VVC on 4K Content

This paper presents evaluation results of Low Complexity Enhancement Video Codec (LCEVC) using its reference implementation (LTM-5.4.1) when combined with HEVC (HM-16.25) and VVC (VTM-19.0) as base layer codecs. Tests were performed for 4K content, following JVET Random Access (RA) Common Testing Conditions (CTC). The anchor is the result of single layer coding, i.e., encoding 4K videos by VTM or HM only, and the test is the result of base layer codec, which encodes quarter-resolution version of 4K videos by using VTM or HM as base layer, followed by enhancement layer coded using L TM-5.4.1, where enhancement layer is obtained as a difference between original4K video and upsampled reconstructed frames from the base layer. PSNR BD-rate was used for objective evaluation. PSNR results show that LCEVC is introducing significant losses. Also, a viewing session was performed to evaluate visual quality of LCEVC when combined with VTM, which showed that LCEVC does not provide any visual benefits for 4K content.