Client
One of the largest broadcasting and cable television companies worldwide, delivering premium content across a variety of platforms including live TV, on-demand video, and interactive media services.
Project
The client partnered with MulticoreWare to enhance the x265 encoder with Screen Content Coding (SCC), an HEVC extension tailored for compressing screen content like text, graphics, and animations. The project involved integrating key SCC tools, including Intra Block Copy (IBC), to improve efficiency and visual quality. This enhancement targeted performance-critical applications such as wireless displays and real-time screen sharing. The result was a highly optimized, versatile encoding solution for screen-intensive media workflows.
What is SCC?
Screen Content Coding (SCC) is an advanced extension of the HEVC (H.265) video compression standard, specifically designed to improve efficiency when encoding screen-based visuals—such as computer-generated graphics, UI elements, text-heavy content, and animations. Unlike traditional natural video scenes, screen content exhibits sharp edges, repeated patterns, and limited color variations, which standard codecs often fail to compress effectively.
SCC introduces specialized tools like Intra Block Copy (IBC) that recognize and efficiently encode these patterns, significantly improving compression performance while preserving visual clarity. This is particularly crucial for modern workflows involving real-time collaboration, video conferencing, remote access, and wireless display technologies. In this project, the inclusion of SCC in x265 helped the client tackle these challenges head-on.
Challenges
- Efficient Encoding of Screen Content – Standard video compression techniques struggle to optimize text-heavy or graphic-intensive video content.
- Real-Time Performance – Applications like video conferencing and remote desktop streaming require low-latency, high-quality encoding.
- Tool Integration – Implementation of advanced tools like Intra Block Copy (IBC) required meticulous development and integration within the x265 encoder framework.
Solution Overview
MulticoreWare enhanced the x265 encoder with full support for Screen Content Coding (SCC). The integration included key SCC features aimed at improving compression performance for non-natural video content:
SCC Extension Support
Enabled the x265 encoder to effectively process and compress screen content.
Intra Block Copy (IBC) Tool
Implemented IBC to allow for efficient encoding by referencing similar blocks within a frame, reducing redundancy.
Solution Highlights
Business Impact
The integration of Screen Content Coding (SCC) into x265 brought measurable benefits to the client’s video processing capabilities.
- Enhanced compression efficiency for screen content such as text, graphics, and animations areas where traditional video encoding often struggles.
- Enabled more efficient bandwidth usage and reduced latency, significantly benefiting real-time scenarios like remote desktop access, wireless display streaming, and video conferencing.
- The client was able to deliver a more seamless and high-quality experience to users across a wide range of platforms and devices, while also improving scalability and operational efficiency.
Conclusion
Through its collaboration with MulticoreWare, the client unlocked the full potential of SCC in x265. This strategic enhancement not only delivered a technical edge but also strengthened the client’s ability to support modern digital workflows with greater speed, efficiency, and quality.
To know more, contact our team at info@multicorewareinc.com
