• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.765-770
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• 2012

In this paper, we proposed an effective hardware structure using DCT-based inra-prediction mode selection to reduce computational complexity caused by intra mode decision. In this hardware structure, the input block is transformed at first and then analyzed to determine its texture directional tendency. the complexity has solved by performing intra prediction in only predicted edge direction. $4{\times}4$ DCT is calculated in one cycle using Multitransform_PE and Inta_pred_PE calculates one prediction mode in two cycles. Experimental results show that the proposed Intra prediction encoding needs only 517 cycles for one macroblock encoding. This architecture improves the performance by about 17% than previous designs. For hardware implementation, the proposed intra prediction encoder is implemented using Verilog HDL and synthesized with Megnachip $0.18{\mu}m$ standard cell library. The synthesis results show that the proposed architecture can run at 125MHz.

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

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.104-113
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• 2014

The existing rough mode decision (RMD) algorithm, used in HEVC standard loses the coding efficiency and wastes encoding time when encoding using transform skip mode (TSM) because the RMD algorithm in HEVC uses a selection method that is designed for DCT, not for TSM. This paper proposes a new RMD algorithm for TSM in HEVC. Our proposed RMD algorithm enhances the coding efficiency by employing a new cost function to increase the probability of selecting the best intra prediction mode for TSM. In addition, it reduces the encoding time by skipping the encoding process of least feasible TSM based on a newly proposed threshold value. The experiment results show that the proposed method achieves coding gains of -0.3% for screen contents with a 10% reduction in encoding time compared to those of the HEVC standard.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.23-32
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• 2007

The H.264/AVC video coding standard uses rate distortion optimization (RDO) method to improve the compression performance in the intra prediction. The complexity and computational load are increased more than previous standard by using this method, even though this standard selects the best coding mode for the current macroblock. This paper proposes a fast intra mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC encoder based on dominant edge direction (DED). To apply the idea, this algorithm uses the approximation of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficient. By detecting the DED, 3 modes instead of 9 modes are chosen for RDO calculation to decide the best mode in the $4{\times}4$ luma block. As for the $16{\times}16$ luma and $8{\times}8$ chroma block, instead of 4 modes, only 2 modes are searched. Experimental results show that the computation time of the proposed algorithm is decreased to about 72% of the full search method with negligible quality loss.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.3165-3181
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• 2019

Spherical videos, which are also called 360-degree videos, have become increasingly popular due to the rapid development of virtual reality technology. However, the large amount of data in such videos is a huge challenge for existing transmission system. To use the existing encode framework, it should be converted into a 2D image plane by using a specific projection format, e.g. the equi-rectangular projection (ERP) format. The existing high-efficiency video coding standard (HEVC) can effectively compress video content, but its enormous computational complexity makes the time spent on compressing high-frame-rate and high-resolution 360-degree videos disproportionate to the benefits of compression. Focusing on the ERP format characteristics of 360-degree videos, this work develops a fast decision algorithm for predicting the coding unit depth interval and adaptive mode decision for intra prediction mode. The algorithm makes full use of the video characteristics of the ERP format by dealing with pole and equatorial areas separately. It sets different reference blocks and determination conditions according to the degree of stretching, which can reduce the coding time while ensuring the quality. Compared with the original reference software HM-16.16, the proposed algorithm can reduce time consumption by 39.3% in the all-intra configuration, and the BD-rate increases by only 0.84%.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2008

H.264| MPEG-4 AVC is a new video codingstandard defined by JVT (Joint Video Team) which consists of ITU-T and ISO/IEC. Many techniques are adopted fur the compression efficiency: Especially, an intra prediction in an inter frame is one example but it leads to excessive amount of encoding time due to the decision of a candidate mode and a RDcost calculation. For this reason, a fast determination of the best intra prediction mode is the main issue for saving the encoding time. In this paper, by using the result of statistical relation between intra $16{\times}16$ and $4{\times}4$ intra predictions, the number of candidate modes for $4{\times}4$ intra prediction is reduced. Firstly, utilizing motion vector obtained after inter prediction, prediction of a block mode for each macroblock is made. If an intra prediction is needed, the correlation table between $16{\times}16$ and $4{\times}4$ intra predicted modes is created using the probability during each I frame-coding process. Secondly, using this result, the candidate modes for a $4{\times}4$ intra prediction that reaches a predefined specific probability value are only considered in the same GOP For the experiments, JM11.0, the reference software of H.264|MPEG-4 AVC is used and the experimental results show that the encoding time could be reduced by 51.24% in maximum with negligible amounts of PSNR drop and bitrate increase.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.16-21
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• 2014

HEVC is the latest joint video coding standard with ITU-T SG16 WP and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11. Its coding efficiency is about two times compared to H.264 high profile. Intra prediction has 35 directional modes including dc and planer. However an accurate mode decision on lots of modes with SSE is too costly to implement it with hardware. The key idea of this paper is a DCT shared architecture to reduce the complexity of HEVC intra encoder. It is to use same DCT block to quantize as well as to calculate SSE in RDO. The proposed intra encoder uses two step mode decision to lighten complexity with simplified RDO blocks and shares the transform resources. Its BD-rate increase is negligible at 20% on hardware aspect and the operating clock frequency is 300MHz@60fps on FHD ($1920{\times}1080$) image.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.341-348
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• 2016

HEVC is the next compression standard and is expected to be used widely replacing the conventional H.264/AVC standard. The compression ratio of the HEVC is twice times than H.264/AVC, whereas its computational complexity is increased by up to 40%. Many research efforts have been made to reduce the computational complexity and to speed up encoding. For intra coding, the rough mode decision (RMD) is commonly applied. The rate-distortion optimization (RDO) process to decide the best mode is too complex so that RMD chooses the candidate modes with a simple process and sends the candidates to RDO process. However, for large-size blocks, the RMD also requires considerable computations. In this paper, a down-sampling scheme is proposed for the RMD process. The reference pixel loading, predicted pixel generation are performed using the down-sampled pixel data. When the proposed scheme is applied to the RMD, the computational complexity is reduced by 70% with a marginal bitrate increase of 0.04%. In terms of area of hardware-based RMD, the gate count and the buffer size is reduced 33% and 66%, respectively.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.3286-3300
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• 2016

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Standard, as the latest coding standard, introduces satisfying compression structures with respect to its predecessor Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC). The new coding standard can offer improved encoding performance compared with H.264/AVC. However, it also leads to enormous computational complexity that makes it considerably difficult to be implemented in real time application. In this paper, based on machine learning, a fast partitioning method is proposed, which can search for the best splitting structures for Intra-Prediction. In view of the video texture characteristics, we choose the entropy of Gray-Scale Difference Statistics (GDS) and the minimum of Sum of Absolute Transformed Difference (SATD) as two important features, which can make a balance between the computation complexity and classification performance. According to the selected features, adaptive decision trees can be built for the Coding Units (CU) with different size by offline training. Furthermore, by this way, the partition of CUs can be resolved as a binary classification problem. Experimental results have shown that the proposed algorithm can save over 34% encoding time on average, with a negligible Bjontegaard Delta (BD)-rate increase.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 2016

HEVC(High Efficient Video Coding) has twice times better compression ratio than H.264/AVC, but since the computational complexity has significantly increased in the encoder side, it may cause difficulty in real-time SW implementation in the encoder side. This paper proposes two methods about fast intra prediction. First, fast mode and prediction unit decision method using transform coefficients of the original block is proposed. and second, fast prediction unit decision method using coded block flag(cbf) is proposed. The proposed method achieves 42% encoder speed up with 0.8% bitrate increase compared with HM16.0.