HEVC Format Range Extension (RExt)

Overview

After finalization of the HEVC base specification, JCT-VC continued to work on extensions.

The Format Range Extension (RExt) provides tools to support 4:0:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 color spaces and additional bit depths.

RExt is included in the second version of HEVC, which has been finalized in October 2014.

Documents

• JCT-VC Documents
• ITU-T Recommendation H.265: High efficiency video coding
• ISO/IEC 23008-2: High efficiency video coding
• Directory of publicly available standards at ISO
• Common test conditions and software reference configurations for HEVC range extensions (JCTVC-P1006)

Reference software

The reference software for RExt has been maintained in a separate branch of the main HEVC software repository.

With HM 16.0 the RExt branch was merged into the mainline HM software, so that there is no separate RExt version maintained anymore.

The software is maintained in a Subversion repository. Please use a Subversion client to access the repository links directly or use the source browser for web browser access.

• HM software repository (main at HHI)
• HM software repository (mirror at BBC)
• HM software repository (source browser)

HEVC reference software documentation

• HM software manual
• HM souce code documentation (Doxygen)
• HEVC Software Development Guidelines (JCTVC-H1001)
• Automatically generated build results

Bug reporting

Specification and software bugs related to RExt can be reported using the main HEVC bug tracker:

• HEVC bug tracker

Overview Papers

• D. Flynn, D. Marpe, M. Naccari, T. Nguyen, C. Rosewarne, K. Sharman, J. Sole and J. Xu, "Overview of the Range Extensions for the HEVC Standard: Tools, Profiles, and Performance", IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 26, Issue 1, pp. 4-19, Sept. 2015
• G. J. Sullivan, J. M. Boyce, Y. Chen, J.-R. Ohm, C. A. Segall, and A. Vetro, "Standardized Extensions of High Efficiency Video Coding", IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 1001-1016, Dec. 2013