Enhancing HDR Video Compression based on Deep Effective Bit Depth Adaptation

It is well known that high dynamic range (HDR) videos enhance immersive visual experiences compared to conventional standard dynamic range content. However, HDR content is typically more challenging to encode due to the increased detail associated with the wider dynamic range. In this work, we improve HDR compression performance using an Effective Bit Depth Adaptation approach (EBDA), which reduces the effective bit depth of the original video content before encoding and reconstructs the full bit depth using a CNN-based up-sampling method at the decoder. The up-sampling deep network is based on a new version of Multi-frame MFRNet, MF-MFRNet. This approach has been integrated into the EBDA framework with two Versatile Video Coding (VVC) reference models: VTM 16.2 and the Fraunhofer Versatile Video Encoder (VVenC 1.4.0). The proposed approach has been evaluated under the JVET HDR Common Test Conditions using the Random Access configuration. The results show evident coding gains over both the original VTM 16.2 and VVenC 1.4.0 on all JVET HDR tested sequences, with average bitrate savings of 3.1% and 4.8% based on PSNR and 7.8% and 9.6% based on VMAF against VTM and VVenC respectively. The source code of multi-frame MFRNet has been released at https://github.com/fan-aaron-zhang/MF-MFRNet.