Scalable Video Coding, can layers be enhanced using svc for a mobile device?

Question

I am doing a bit of research about SVC for the H264 codec and as far as I know, the SVC is an extension of the previous AVC which uses a base layer for SVC so that it works on a mobile device(perferably android).

My question is, is it possible to enhance this base layer on a mobile device using SVC? Is a mobile device powerful enough(memory, ram ect.) to perform this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Im not sure i completely understand the question but ill try to answer anyway

an SVC stream is always composed of a base layer which is H264 compatible and 1 or more enhancmement layers (temporal, spatial or quality ) which can only be decoded by and SVC decoder.

Most mobile devices use and HW accelrator to decode the H.264 stream so the CPU is hardly loaded while decoding the base layer

to decode enhancement layer(s) on android you will need to use an SVC decoder for arm which i'm not sure if exist at all. you can try to port open source projects like opensvc yourself

since the decoding of the enhancement layer is highly dependant on the base layers you will not be able to use the H264 HW accelerator for the base layer because the HW accelerator cannot supply the metadata for the enhancement layer deocde process.

so in terms of processing power you will need to load the CPU both for the base layer and for the enhancement layers. wether it will runs depends on the following 1. performance of svc decoder code 2. resolution and fps of the video 3. complexity of the content 4. amount of type enhancment layers

hope this answers your question

Answer 2

Your question can not really be answered, it depends...

FWIW here's my 0.02 cents:

Modern mobile phones e.g such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 have a 1.2 GHz Dual Core processor and 1GB of RAM. While other phones may have lower specifications, mobiles in general are constantly improving. I see no reason why such devices could not decode an SVC stream. However this also depends on other factors such as the resolution and complexity of the video, the number of SVC layers and of course, very importantly, the efficiency of the decoder implementation.

While Android does have an H.264 decoder, I suspect it may be some time until it supports SVC.