Performance Analysis of Hardware-Accelerated 10-Bit 4:2:2 Encoding with Split-Frame Encoding for High-Fidelity V-PCC Streaming

2026-06-27

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of real-time high-fidelity video-based point cloud compression (V-PCC), which requires 10-bit 4:2:2 chroma subsampling to avoid 3D reconstruction artifacts—a format unsupported by conventional GPU hardware encoders. Leveraging the on-chip 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC hardware encoder newly introduced in NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, the study proposes a split-frame encoding (SFE) strategy that, for the first time, demonstrates real-time V-PCC feasibility on commercially available general-purpose GPUs without relying on dedicated ASICs. By exploiting four-way parallel encoding, the system achieves a throughput of 122 fps, satisfying the 8K/120fps real-time requirement while limiting BD-Rate degradation to under 5% and exhibiting excellent energy efficiency.

Abstract

Video-based Point Cloud Compression (V-PCC) encodes volumetric data by projecting 3D geometry and texture onto 2D video frames. To prevent spatial distortion and color bleeding during 3D reconstruction, this process requires 10-bit color depth and 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, rather than the standard 8-bit 4:2:0 format. Additionally, capturing high-density dynamic point clouds requires demanding encoding parameters, such as 8K resolution at framerates up to 120 fps. Historically, the lack of 4:2:2 chroma support in older GPU hardware encoders restricted real-time V-PCC to custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). However, the recent introduction of NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU architecture, featuring on-chip hardware encoders with 10-bit 4:2:2 support, presents an opportunity to shift this workload to general-purpose hardware. This paper investigates the feasibility of such an approach. Using a commercially available Blackwell GPU equipped with four parallel on-die hardware encoders as a testbed, we evaluate the throughput, rate-distortion (RD) performance, and power consumption of 8K 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC across various Split-Frame Encoding (SFE) configurations. Our results demonstrate that 4-way SFE achieves an encoding throughput of 122 fps, successfully meeting the strict real-time constraints of high-density V-PCC. Although the inability to exploit spatial redundancies across slice boundaries results in a BD-Rate penalty of up to 5%, the measured throughput and power efficiency establish standard, commercial off-the-shelf GPUs as a highly viable baseline for real-time volumetric video streaming.

Problem

• V-PCC
• 10-bit 4:2:2 encoding
• real-time streaming
• high-fidelity volumetric video
• hardware acceleration

Innovation

• V-PCC
• 10-bit 4:2:2 encoding
• hardware-accelerated video encoding
• Split-Frame Encoding
• Blackwell GPU