• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.07e
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• pp.2068-2071
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• 2003

최근 표준화가 완성된 H.264 는 가변 블록 움직임 보상, 복수 참조 영상, 그리고 1/4 화소 움직임 벡터 정확도를 지원하고 있다. 그러나 이러한 새로운 부호화기술은 부호화 효율 향상의 주된 요인이면서, 동시에 높은 복잡도의 요인이기도 하다 따라서 H.264 비디오 표준의 실제 응용 확대를 위해서는 이러한 기술의 속도향상이 필수적이다. [1]에서 제안한 고속 모드 결정법은 조기에 모드 결정을 할 수 있기 때문에, 움직임 벡터 탐색과 비트율-왜곡치 (Rate-Distortion cost) 계산 과정을 효율적으로 생략할 수 있는 방법이다. 하지만 [1]에서 제안된 측정치 r은 주변 블록의 정보를 이용하지 않기 때문에 모드 결정 에러를 좀 더 효과적으로 줄이지 못했다. 본 논문에서는 주변 블록의 정보를 이용하여 [1]의 방법을 개선시킨 것으로 실험 결과 큰 부호화 손실 없이 계산 량 감소에 있어 매우 높은 효율을 제공함을 확인하였다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.88-96
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• 2007

H.264 is a new international video coding standard that can achieve considerably higher coding efficiency than conventional standards. Its coding gain has been achieved by employing advanced video coding methods. Specially, the increased number of macroblock modes and the complex mode decision procedure using the Lagrangian optimization are the main factors for increasing coding efficiency. Although H.264 obtains improved coding efficiency, it is difficult to do an real-time encoding because it considers all coding parameters in the mode decision procedure. In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision algorithm which classifies the macroblock modes in order to determine the optimal mode having low complexity quickly. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce the encoding time by 34.95% on average without significant PSNR degradation or bit-rate increment. In addition, in order to show the validity of simulation results, we set up a low boundary condition for coding efficiency and complexity and show that the proposed algorithm satisfies the low boundary condition.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.275-285
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• 2003

The now video coding standard H.264 employs variable block size motion compensation, multiple references, and quarter-pel motion vector accuracy. These techniques are key features to accomplish higher coding gain, however, at the same time main factors that increase overall computational complexity. Therefore, in order to apply H.264 to many applications, key techniques are requested to improve their speed. For this reason, we propose a fast motion estimation which is suited for variable block size motion communication. In addition, we propose a fast mode decision method to choose the best mode at early stage. Experimental results show the reduction of the number of SAT SATD calculations by a factor of 4.5 and 2.6 times respectively, when we compare the proposed fast motion estimation and the conventional MVFAS $T^{［8-10］}$. Besides, the number of RDcost computations is reduced by about 45%. Therefore, the proposed methods reduces significantly its computational complexity without noticeable coding loss.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.417-425
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• 2003

H.264, which is the latest video coding standard of both ITU-T(International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication standardization sector) and MPEG(Moving Picture Experts Group), adopts new video coding tools such as variable block size motion estimation, multiple reference frames, quarter-pel motion estimation/compensation(ME/MC), 4${\times}$4 Integer DCT(Discrete Cosine Transform), and Rate-Distortion Optimization, etc. These new video coding tools provide good coding of efficiency compared with existing video coding standards as H.263, MPEG-4, etc. However, these new coding tools require the increase of encoder complexity. Therefore, in order to apply H.264 to many real applications, fast algorithms are required for H.264 coding tools. In this paper, when encoder MacroBlock(MB) mode is decided by rate-distortion optimization tool, fast mode decision algorithm by skipping variable block size ME/MC and spatial-predictive coding, which occupies most encoder complexity, is proposed. In terms of computational complexity, the proposed method runs about 4 times as far as JM(Joint Model) 42 encoder of H.264, while the PSNR(peak signal-to-noise ratio)s of the decoded images are maintained.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.165-173
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• 2004

H.264 is the newest international video coding standard that provides high coding efficiency. A macroblock in H.264 has 7 different motion-compensation block sizes in the Inter mode, and several different prediction directions in the Intra mode. In order to achieve as highest coding efficiency as possible, H.264 reference model employs complex mode decision technique based on rate-distortion (RD) optimization which requires high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose two techniques -'early SKIP mode decision' and 'selective intra mode decision' - which can further reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results show that without considerable performance degradation, the proposed methods reduce encoding time by 30% on average and save the number of computing rate-distortion cost by 72%.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.71-75
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• 2013

Recently proliferating heterogeneous multimedia service environments should be able to deal with many different transmission speeds, image sizes, or qualities of video. However, not many existing video compression standards satisfy those necessities. To satisfy the functional requirements, the standardization of the H.264/AVC Scalable Extension (SE) technique has been recently completed. It is an extension of the H.264/AVC which can encode several image sizes and qualities at the same time as a single bitstream. To perform optimum mode decision, motion estimation is performed for all MB modes, and the RD costs are compared to identify an MB mode with the smallest RD cost. This increases computational complexity of H.264/AVC SE encoding. In this paper, we propose an early skip mode detection scheme to reduce candidate modes and suggest an algorithm of fast mode decision utilizing reference modes according to the mode history.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.95-107
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision method for temporal and spatial scalability to reduce computational complexity of mode decision that used to be computationally one of the most intensive processes of the MPEG-4 AVC|H.264 SE(Scalable Extension) encoding. For temporal scalability, we propose an early skip method and MHM(mode history map) method. The early skip method confines macroblock modes of backward and forward frames within selected a few candidates. The MHM method utilizes stored information of frames inside a GOP of lower levels for the decision of MHM at higher level. For the spatial scalability, we propose the method that uses a candidate mode according to the MHM method and adds the BL_mode as candidates. The proposed scheme reduces the number of candidate modes to reduce computational complexity in mode decision. The proposed scheme reduces total encoding time by about 52% for temporal scalability and 47% for spatial scalability without significant loss of RD performance.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.33 no.3C
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• pp.247-254
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• 2008

H.264 provides a good coding efficiency compared with existing video coding standards, H.263, MPEG-4, based on the use of multiple reference frame for variable block size motion estimation, quarter-pixel motion estimation and compensation, $4{\times}4$ integer DCT, rate-distortion optimization, and etc. However, many modules used to increase its performance also require H.264 to have increased complexity so that fast algorithms are to be implemented as practical approach. In this paper, among many approaches, fast mode decision algorithm by skipping variable block size motion estimation and spatial-predictive coding, which occupies most encoder complexity, is proposed. This approach takes advantages of temporal and spatial properties of fast mode selection techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can save encoding time up to 65% compared with the H.264 standard while maintaining the visual perspectives.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.2 s.314
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• pp.1-11
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• 2007

H.264/AVC uses variable block sizes to achieve significant coding gain. It has 7 different coding modes having different motion compensation block sizes in Inter slice, and 2 different intra prediction modes in Intra slice. This fine-tuned new coding feature has achieved far more significant coding gain compared with previous video coding standards. However, extremely high computational complexity is required when rate-distortion optimization (RDO) algorithm is used. This computational complexity is a major problem in implementing real-time H.264/AVC encoder on computationally constrained devices. Therefore, there is a clear need for complexity reduction algorithm of H.264/AVC such as fast mode decision. In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision with early $P8\times8$ mode rejection based on block size activity using large block history map (LBHM). Simulation results show that without any meaningful degradation, the proposed method reduces whole encoding time on average by 53%. Also the hybrid usage of the proposed method and the early SKIP mode decision in H.264/AVC reference model reduces whole encoding time by 63% on average.

• 한국정보통신설비학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.255-258
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• 2006

In the H.264/AVC standard, intra prediction increases the coding efficiency of intra macroblocks and by applying rate-distortion optimization to each macroblock, it is possible to choose Inter or Intra encoding adaptively. This sort of encoding scheme, however, increases encoding complexity dramatically and causes troubles in practical applications of the real-time mobile environment. In order to decrease the complexity, variety of methods is proposed but most of those take only its current block into consideration for selecting candidate modes which naturally causes degradation in PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio). The proposed fast intra mode decision finds the candidate modes by analyzing transformed coefficients of neighboring blocks stored in the buffer at the encoder stage of input sequences. We verify this proposed scheme in complexity, PSNR and bit-rate.