SAPEC tests compression techniques for UHD 8K video

Spanish video contribution and distribution company SAPEC has carried out a series of content compression tests for encoding 8K content with HEVC standards.

The new 8K video format has a resolution of 7680 pixels x 4320 lines, quadrupling the total number of pixels used in 4K.

According to SAPEC, the HEVC standard known as ITU H.265 is currently the best option for compressing 8K video. Initial tests using HEVC revealed the bitrate needed for 8K video transmission at optimal quality is slightly more than double that for 4K.

SAPEC’s team also took into consideration the issues around time, especially for live or real-time compression. To meet the challenge, they implemented temporal and spatial parallelisation techniques offered by the HEVC standard.

The company describes spatial parallelisation as dividing the image into smaller fragments so that they are processed in parallel, to later receive the result of each of the fragments and form a single output stream.

Temporal parallelisation is described as compressing images (or groups of images) which do not have dependencies between them, at the same time.

Last year, SAPEC worked alongside other technology companies to facilitate Spanish broadcaster RTVE’s world’s first broadcast of an UHD 8K signal in DVB-T2. Tvbeurope