• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.16 no.10
• /
• pp.514-521
• /
• 2016

The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard provides superior coding efficiency by utilizing highly flexible block structure and more diverse coding modes. However, rate-distortion optimization (RDO) process for the decision of optimal block size and prediction mode requires excessive computational complexity. To alleviate the computation load, this paper proposes a new moment-based fast CU size decision algorithm for intra coding in HEVC. In the proposed method, moment values are computed in each CU block to estimate the texture complexity of the block from which the decision on an additional CU splitting procedure is performed. Unlike conventional methods which are mostly variance-based approaches, the proposed method incorporates the third-order moments of the CU block in the design of the fast CU size decision algorithm, which enables an elaborate classification of CU types and thus improves the RD-performance of the fast algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method saves 32% encoding time with 1.1% increase of BD-rate compared to HM-10.0, and 4.2% decrease of BD-rate compared to the conventional variance-based fast algorithm.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.235-244
• /
• 2022

Many new techniques have been adopted in HEVC (High efficiency video coding) standard, such as quadtree-structured coding unit (CU), prediction unit (PU) partition, 35 intra-mode, and so on. To reduce computational complexity, the paper proposes two optimization algorithms which include fast CU depth range decision and fast PU partition mode decision. Firstly, depth range of CU is predicted according to spatial-temporal correlation. Secondly, we utilize the depth difference between the current CU and CU corresponding to the same position of adjacent frame for PU mode range selection. The number of traversal candidate modes is reduced. The experiment result shows the proposed algorithm obtains a lot of time reducing, and the loss of coding efficiency is inappreciable.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.270-280
• /
• 2013

A fast intra-prediction method is proposed for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) using a fast intra-mode decision and fast coding unit (CU) size decision. HEVC supports very sophisticated intra modes and a recursive quadtree-based CU structure. To provide a high coding efficiency, the mode and CU size are selected in a rate-distortion optimized manner. This causes a high computational complexity in the encoder, and, for practical applications, the complexity should be significantly reduced. In this paper, among the many predefined modes, the intra-prediction mode is chosen without rate-distortion optimization processes, instead using the difference between the minimum and second minimum of the rate-distortion cost estimation based on the Hadamard transform. The experiment results show that the proposed method achieves a 49.04% reduction in the intra-prediction time and a 32.74% reduction in the total encoding time with a nearly similar coding performance to that of HEVC test model 2.1.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
• /
• v.53 no.2
• /
• pp.89-96
• /
• 2016

The High Efficiency Video Coding (MPEG-H HEVC/ITU-T H.265) is the newest video coding standard which has the quadtree-structured coding unit (CU). The quadtree-structure splits a CU adaptively, and its optimum CU depth can be determined by rate-distortion optimization. Such HEVC encoding requires very high computational complexity for CU depth decision. Motivated that the blob detection, which is a well-known algorithm in computer vision, detects keypoints in pictures and decision of CU depth needs to consider high frequency energy distribution, in this paper, we propose to utilize these keypoints for fast CU depth decision. Experimental results show that 20% encoding time can be saved with only slightly increasing BDBR by 0.45% on all intra case.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.484-492
• /
• 2016

The High efficiency video coding (HEVC) is the newest video coding standard that achieves coding efficiency higher than previous video coding standards such as H.264/AVC. In intra prediction, the prediction units (PUs) are derived from a large coding unit (LCU) which is partitioned into smaller coding units (CUs) sizing from 8x8 to 64x64 in a quad-tree structure. As they are divided until having the minimum depth, Optimum CU splitting is selected in RDO (Rate Distortion Optimization) process. In this process, HEVC demands high computational complexity. In this paper, to reduce the complexity of HEVC, we propose a fast CU mode decision (FCDD) for intra prediction by using FAST (Features from Accelerated Segment Test) corner detection. The proposed method reduces computational complexity with 53.73% of the computational time for the intra prediction while coding performance degradation with 0.7% BDBR is small compared to conventional HEVC.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.959-974
• /
• 2020

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) employs quadtree coding tree unit (CTU) structure to improve its coding efficiency, but at the same time, it also requires a very high computational complexity due to its exhaustive search processes for an optimal coding unit (CU) partition. With the aim of solving the problem, a fast CU size decision optimal algorithm based on neighborhood prediction is presented for HEVC in this paper. The contribution of this paper lies in the fact that we successfully use the partition information of neighborhood CUs in different depth to quickly determine the optimal partition mode for the current CU by neighborhood prediction technology, which can save much computational complexity for HEVC with negligible RD-rate (rate-distortion rate) performance loss. Specifically, in our scheme, we use the partition information of left, up, and left-up CUs to quickly predict the optimal partition mode for the current CU by neighborhood prediction technology, as a result, our proposed algorithm can effectively solve the problem above by reducing many unnecessary prediction and partition operations for HEVC. The simulation results show that our proposed fast CU size decision algorithm based on neighborhood prediction in this paper can reduce about 19.0% coding time, and only increase 0.102% BD-rate (Bjontegaard delta rate) compared with the standard reference software of HM16.1, thus improving the coding performance of HEVC.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
• /
• v.49 no.3
• /
• pp.40-50
• /
• 2012

In this paper we propose the fast CU (Coding Unit) mode decision method. To reduce computational complexity and save encoding time of HEVC, we divided CU, PU (Prediction Unit) and TU (Transform Unit) decision process into two stages. In the first stage, because $2N{\times}2N$ PU mode is mostly selected among $2N{\times}2N$, $N{\times}2N$, $2N{\times}N$, $N{\times}N$ PU modes, proposed algorithm uses only $2N{\times}2N$ PU mode deciding depth of each CU in the LCU (Largest CU). And then, proposed method decides exact PU and TU modes at the depth level which is decided in the first stage. In addition, early skip decision rule is applied to the proposed method to obtain more efficient computational complexity reduction. The proposed method reduces computational complexity of the HEVC encoder by simplifying a CU depth decision method. We could obtain about 50% computational complexity reduction in comparison with HM 3.3 HEVC reference software while bitrate compressed by the proposed algorithm increases only 2%.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.405-414
• /
• 2014

High Efficiency Video Coding(HEVC) obtains high compression ratio by applying recursive quad-tree structured coding unit(CU). However, this recursive quad-tree structure brings very high computational complexity to HEVC encoder. In this paper, we present fast CU decision algorithm in recursive quad-tree structure. The proposed algorithm estimates initial CU size before CTU encoding and checks the proposed condition using Coded Block Flag(CBF) and Rate-distortion cost to achieve the fast encoding time saving. And, intra mode estimation is also possible to be skipped using the CBF values acquired during the inter PU mode estimations. Experiment results shows that the proposed algorithm saved about 49.91% and 37.97% of encoding time according to the weighting condition.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.340-347
• /
• 2015

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) achieves high coding efficiency by employing a quadtree-based coding unit (CU) block partitioning structure and various prediction units (PUs), and the determination of the best CU partition structure and the best PU mode based on rate-distortion (R-D) cost. However, the computation complexity of encoding also dramatically increases. In this paper, to reduce such encoding computational complexity, we propose three fast PU mode decision methods based on encoding information of upper depth as follows. In the first method, the search of PU mode of the current CU is early terminated based on the sub-CBF (Coded Block Flag) of upper depth. In the second method, the search of intra prediction modes of PU in the current CU is skipped based on the sub-Intra R-D cost of upper depth. In the last method, the search of intra prediction modes of PU in the lower depth's CUs is skipped based on the sub-CBF of the current depth's CU. Experimental results show that the three proposed methods reduce the computational complexity of HM 14.0 to 31.4%, 2.5%, and 23.4% with BD-rate increase of 1.2%, 0.11%, and 0.9%, respectively. The three methods can be applied in a combined way to be applied to both of inter prediction and intra prediction, which results in the complexity reduction of 34.2% with 1.9% BD-rate increase.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.1195-1211
• /
• 2016

The emerging video coding standard High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) has shown almost 40% bit-rate reduction over the state-of-the-art Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard but at about 40% computational complexity overhead. The main reason for HEVC computational complexity is the inter prediction that accounts for 60%-70% of the whole encoding time. In this paper, we propose several fast coding unit (CU) encoding schemes based on the Merge mode and motion estimation information to reduce the computational complexity caused by the HEVC inter prediction. Firstly, an early Merge mode decision method based on motion estimation (EMD) is proposed for each CU size. Then, a Merge mode based early termination method (MET) is developed to determine the CU size at an early stage. To provide a better balance between computational complexity and coding efficiency, several fast CU encoding schemes are surveyed according to the rate-distortion-complexity characteristics of EMD and MET methods as a function of CU sizes. These fast CU encoding schemes can be seamlessly incorporated in the existing control structures of the HEVC encoder without limiting its potential parallelization and hardware acceleration. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed schemes achieve 19%-46% computational complexity reduction over the HEVC test model reference software, HM 16.4, at a cost of 0.2%-2.4% bit-rate increases under the random access coding configuration. The respective values under the low-delay B coding configuration are 17%-43% and 0.1%-1.2%.