• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.408-427
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• 2011

Intensive computational complexity is an obstacle of enabling multiview video coding for real-time applications. In this paper, we present a fast macroblock (MB) mode selection algorithm for B frames which are based on the computational complexity analyses between the MB mode selection and reference frame selection. Three strategies are proposed to reduce the coding complexity jointly. First, the temporal correlation of MB modes between current MB and its temporal corresponding MBs is utilized to reduce computational complexity in determining the optimal MB mode. Secondly, Lagrangian cost of SKIP mode is compared with that of Inter $16{\times}16$ modes to early terminate the mode selection process. Thirdly, reference frame correlation among different Inter modes is exploited to reduce the number of reference frames. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can promote the encoding speed by 3.71~7.22 times with 0.08dB PSNR degradation and 2.03% bitrate increase on average compared with the joint multiview video model.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.736-744
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• 2007

We propose a fast macroblock (MB) mode prediction and decision algorithm based on temporal correlation for P-slices in the H.264/AVC video standard. There are eight block types for temporal decorrelation, including SKIP mode based on rate-distortion (RD) optimization. This scheme gives rise to exhaustive computations (search) in the coding procedure. To overcome this problem, a thresholding method for fast inter mode decision using a MB tracking scheme to find the most correlated block and RD cost of the correlated block is suggested for early stop of the inter mode determination. We propose a two-step inter mode candidate selection method using statistical analysis. In the first step, a mode is selected based on the mode information of the co-located MB from the previous frame. Then, an adaptive thresholding scheme is applied using the RD cost of the most correlated MB. Secondly, additional candidate modes are considered to determine the best mode of the initial candidate modes that does not satisfy the designed thresholding rule. Comparative analysis shows that a speed-up factor of up to 70.59% is obtained when compared with the full mode search method with a negligible bit increment and a minimal loss of image quality.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.170-173
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• 2009

In this paper, we propose a fast intra prediction mode selection method in Scalable Video Coding(SVC) which is an emerging video coding standard as an extension of H.264/Advanced Video Coding(H.264/AVC). The proposed method decides a candidate intra prediction mode based on the characteristic of macroblock smoothness. Statistical analysis is applied to computing that smoothness in spatial enhancement layer. We also propose an early termination scheme for Intra_BL mode decision where the RD cost value of Intra_BL is utilized. Compared with JSVM software, our scheme can reduce about 55% of the computation complexity of intra prediction on average, while the performance degradation is negligible; For low QP values, the average PSNR loss is very negligible, equivalently the bit rate increases by 0.01%. For high QP values, the average PSNR loss is less than 0.01dB, which equals to 0.25% increase in bitrate on average.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.8C
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• pp.790-800
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• 2009

For the improvement of coding efficiency, the H.264/AYC standard uses new coding tools such as 1/4-pel-accurate motion estimation, multiple references, intra prediction, loop filter, variable block size etc. Using these coding tools, H.264/AYC has achieved significant improvements from rate-distortion point of view compared to existing standards. However, the encoder complexity was greatly increased due to these coding tools. We focus on the complexity reduction method of intra macroblock mode selection. The proposed algorithm for fast intra mode selection calculates the edge activity in transform domain, and performs fast encoding of intra frame in H.264/AYC through the fast prediction mode selection of intra4x4 and chrominance blocks. Simulation results show that the proposed method saves about 59.76% for QCIF sequences and 65.03% for CIF sequences of total encoding time, while bitrate increase and PSNR decrease are very small.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.5 no.8
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• pp.1444-1456
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• 2011

This paper presents a low-complexity algorithm for an H.264/AVC encoder. The proposed motion estimation scheme determines the best coding mode for a given macroblock (MB) by finding motion-blurred MBs; identifying, before motion estimation, an early selection of MBs; and hence saving processing time for these MBs. It has been observed that human vision is more sensitive to the movement of well-structured objects than to the movement of randomly structured objects. This study analyzed permissible perceptual distortions and assigned a larger inter-mode value to the regions that are perceptually less sensitive to human vision. Simulation results illustrate that the algorithm can reduce the computational complexity of motion estimation by up to 47.16% while maintaining high compression efficiency.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.187-194
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• 2001

The Advanced Intra Coding(AIC) mode included in the H.263+ which is for video ceding at low bit rates, selects one prediction direction of DCT coefficients among three directions for every intra macroblock. Based ()n the selected direction, It uses a different DCT scanning order, quantization scheme, and VLC table. The use of the AIC mode brings higher compression ratio and improved PSNR than the H.263 baseline. This paper proposes a simplified submode selection method for a direction of the DCT coefficient prediction for advanced ultra coding in H.263. Compared to the conventional method the proposed simplified method can achieve a similar coding Performance at computational complexity reduced to 1/7 and with much less memory requirement. The proposed method will be useful in implementing a simplified H.263 system.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.30 no.11C
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• pp.1098-1107
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• 2005

The emerging H.264/AVC video coding standard improves coding performance significantly by adopting many advanced techniques. This is achieved at the expense of great increasing encoder complexity. Specifically the intra prediction using RDO examines all possible combinations of coding modes, which depend on spatial directional correlation with adjacent blocks. For 4${\times}$4 luma blocks, there are 9 modes, and for 16${\times}$16 luma and 8${\times}$8 chroma blocks, there are 4 modes, respectively. Therefore the number of mode combinations for each macroblock is 592. This paper presents a method to reduce the RDO complexity using simple directional masks and neighboring modes. According to the proposed method, we reduce the number of mode combinations to 132 at the most. Experimental results show the proposed method reduces the encoding time up to $70\%$ with negligible loss of PSNR and bitrate increase compared to the H.264/AVC exhaustive search.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.163-174
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• 2008

The H.264/AVC provides gains in compression efficiency of up to 50% over a wide range of bit rates and video resolutions compared to previous standards. However, to achieve such high coding efficiency, the complexity of H.264/AVC encoder is also increased drastically than previous ones, mainly because of mode decision. In this paper, we propose a three-step mode decision algorithm for fast encoding in H.264/AVC. In the first step, we select skip mode or inter mode by considering the temporal correlation and spatial correlation. In the second step, if the result of the first step is INTER mode, we select one group between two groups for final mode. In the third step, we select final mode by exploiting the pixel values of error macroblock or the modes of adjacent macroblocks. Simulations show that the proposed method reduces the encoding time by 42% on average without any significant PSNR losses.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.137-151
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• 2008

H.264/AVC is showed high coding efficiency more than previous video coding standard by using new coding tools. Specially, Variable block-based motion estimation and Rate-Distortion Optimization are very important coding tools in H.264/AVC. These coding tools have high coding efficiency, however the encoder complexity greatly increase due to these coding tools. In this paper, we propose early SKIP mode decision and selective inter/intra mode decision to reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed method could reduce encoding time of the overall sequences by 30% on average than JM 10.2 without noticeable degradation of coding efficiency. Besides, the proposed method runs over twice as fast as the previous proposed Fast Coding Mode Selection method (FCMS)[5].

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.25 no.1B
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• pp.77-88
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• 2000

This paper presents an approach for rate control by adaptively selecting macroblock modes in video coding.The problem of rate control has been investigated by many authors where quantizer level is adjustedbased on the buffer fullness. The proposed approach is different fron the previous ones [4] id that it finds the optimal decision curve rather than finding a set of the modes. Proposed algorithm extends the coding decision options for rate control to motion/no-motion compensation as well as inter/intra decisions. Instead of having a fixed motion/no-notion compensation or inter/intra decision curve, one can utilize an adaptive decision curvebased on the characteristics of input frames so that the PSNR at a given bit rate is maximized. Therefore, the proposed approach provides better rate control than simple quantizer feedback approach interns of visual quality. The curve is obtained by utilizing simulated annealing optimization technique. Thealgorithm is implemented and simulations are compared with other approaches within H.261 video codec.