Introduction to the Special Issue on HEVC Extensions and Efficient HEVC Implementations
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is the most recent standard in the series of major video coding standards jointly produced by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). HEVC was first approved in 2013 in the ITU-T as Recommendation H.265 and in ISO/IEC as International Standard 23008-2, and it offers an unprecedented degree of compression capability for a very wide variety of applications. In the three years since its initial completion, it has been extended in several important ways to further broaden its scope. This special issue on HEVC features two sections: 1) HEVC extensions and 2) efficient HEVC implementations.