Edge-Based Fast Intra Mode Decision in HEVC

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) appears due to the demand on high compression video coding beyond H.264/AVC in ultra-high definition (UHD) videos. As for intra prediction, HEVC has 35 prediction modes while H.264/AVC has 9 intra modes. To exploit the spatial correlation, we adopt an edge detection method, establish the edge map, and adaptively select the candidate modes using the acquired edge information in a block. The number of the candidate modes is determined through trade-off between computational complexity and coding efficiency. Besides, the range of coding unit sizes is determined using the uniqueness of the edge directions for the given image block. As a result, we reduced the encoding time by 56.8% at the cost of 2.5% BD-BR increase on average compared to Full modes at the HEVC reference software (HM 6.0 [1]).