Low Complexity, High Frame Rate Video Encoder

Disclosed herein are techniques and computer readable media containing instructions arranged to utilize existing video compression techniques to enhance a visually appealing high frame rate, without incurring the bitrate and computational complexity common to high frame rate coding using conventional techniques. SVC skip slices—slices in which the slice_skip_flag in the slice header is set to a value of 1 —require very few bits in the bitstream, thereby keeping the bitrate overhead very low. Also, when using an appropriate implementation, the computational requirements for coding an enhancement layer picture consisting entirely of skipped slices are almost negligible. In addition, skipped slices in an enhancement layer inherit motion information from the base layer(s), thereby minimizing, if not eliminating, the possibly bad correlation between nonlinear motion and linear interpolation. Further, the issue of radical brightness changes of a picture (or significant part thereof) does not exist, as the base layer is coded at full frame rate and can contain information related to the brightness change that can also be inherited by the enhancement layer.