# Neural Video Compression with Temporal Layer-Adaptive Hierarchical B-frame Coding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15791 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15791/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Deformable Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06211/) (2017)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [Joint Autoregressive and Hierarchical Priors for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02736/) (2018)
- [Video Enhancement with Task-Oriented Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09078/) (2017)
- [Optical Flow Estimation using a Spatial Pyramid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.00850/) (2016)
- [DVC: An End-to-end Deep Video Compression Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00101/) (2018)
- [CompressAI: a PyTorch library and evaluation platform for end-to-end compression research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03029/) (2020)
- [Deep Contextual Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15047/) (2021)
- [Neural Video Compression with Diverse Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14402/) (2023)
- [FVC: A New Framework towards Deep Video Compression in Feature Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09600/) (2021)
- [Hybrid Spatial-Temporal Entropy Modelling for Neural Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05894/) (2022)
- [Temporal Context Mining for Learned Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13850/) (2021)
- [Learning for Video Compression with Hierarchical Quality and Recurrent Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01966/) (2020)
- [VCT: A Video Compression Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07307/) (2022)
- [ELF-VC: Efficient Learned Flexible-Rate Video Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14335/) (2021)
- [Learning for Video Compression with Recurrent Auto-Encoder and Recurrent Probability Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13560/) (2020)
- [Extending Neural P-frame Codecs for B-frame Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00531/) (2021)
- [End-to-End Rate-Distortion Optimized Learned Hierarchical Bi-Directional Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09529/) (2021)
- [Flexible-Rate Learned Hierarchical Bi-Directional Video Compression With Motion Refinement and Frame-Level Bit Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.13613/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Hierarchical B-frame Video Coding for Long Group of Pictures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16544/) (2024)
- [Fine-Grained Motion Compression and Selective Temporal Fusion for Neural B-Frame Video Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07709/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural video compression (NVC) is a rapidly evolving video coding research area, with some models achieving superior coding efficiency compared to the latest video coding standard Versatile Video Coding (VVC). In conventional video coding standards, the hierarchical B-frame coding, which utilizes a bidirectional prediction structure for higher compression, had been well-studied and exploited. In NVC, however, limited research has investigated the hierarchical B scheme. In this paper, we propose an NVC model exploiting hierarchical B-frame coding with temporal layer-adaptive optimization. We first extend an existing unidirectional NVC model to a bidirectional model, which achieves -21.13% BD-rate gain over the unidirectional baseline model. However, this model faces challenges when applied to sequences with complex or large motions, leading to performance degradation. To address this, we introduce temporal layer-adaptive optimization, incorporating methods such as temporal layer-adaptive quality scaling (TAQS) and temporal layer-adaptive latent scaling (TALS). The final model with the proposed methods achieves an impressive BD-rate gain of -39.86% against the baseline. It also resolves the challenges in sequences with large or complex motions with up to -49.13% more BD-rate gains than the simple bidirectional extension. This improvement is attributed to the allocation of more bits to lower temporal layers, thereby enhancing overall reconstruction quality with smaller bits. Since our method has little dependency on a specific NVC model architecture, it can serve as a general tool for extending unidirectional NVC models to the ones with hierarchical B-frame coding.