• ETRI Journal
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.721-731
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• 2006

A fast intra skip detection algorithm based on the ratedistortion (RD) cost for an inter frame (P-slices) is proposed for H.264/AVC video encoding. In the H.264/AVC coding standard, a robust rate-distortion optimization technique is used to select the best coding mode and reference frame for each macroblock (MB). There are three types of intra predictions according to profiles. These are $16{\times}16$ and $4{\times}4$ intra predictions for luminance and an $8{\times}8$ intra prediction for chroma. For the high profile, an $8{\times}8$ intra prediction has been added for luminance. The $4{\times}4$ prediction mode has 9 prediction directions with 4 directions for $16{\times}16$ and $8{\times}8$ luma, and $8{\times}8$ chrominance. In addition to the inter mode search procedure, an intra mode search causes a significant increase in the complexity and computational load for an inter frame. To reduce the computational load of the intra mode search at the inter frame, the RD costs of the neighborhood MBs for the current MB are used and we propose an adaptive thresholding scheme for the intra skip extraction. We verified the performance of the proposed scheme through comparative analysis of experimental results using joint model reference software. The overall encoding time was reduced up to 32% for the IPPP sequence type and 35% for the IBBPBBP sequence type.

• 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%.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.48-56
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• 2009

We propose a fast intra mode skip decision algorithm for H.264/AVC video encoding. Although newly added MB encoding algorithms based on various prediction methods increase compression ratio, they require a significant increase in the computational complexity because we calculate rate-distortion(RD) cost for all possible MB coding modes and then choose the best one. In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision algorithm based on an adaptive motion vector map(AMVM) method for H.264/AVC video encoding to reduce the processing time for the inter frame. We verify that the proposed algorithm generates generally good performances in PSNR, bit rates, and processing time.

• 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].

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.130-136
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• 2016

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) extension considers screen content as one of its main candidate sources for encoding. Among the tools already included in HEVC version 1, the technique of using transform skip mode allows transform to be skipped and to perform quantization process only. It is known to improve video coding efficiency for screen contents which are characterized to have much high frequency energy. But encoding complexity increases since its encoder should decide whether transform should be used or not in each $4{\times}4$ transform block. Based on statistical correlation between IBC (Intra block copy) and transform skip modes both of which are known effective in screen contents, this paper proposes a combined method of the fast transform skip mode decision and a modified transform skip signaling which signals transform_skip_flag at CU level as a representative transform skip signal. By simulation, the proposed method is shown to reduce encoding time of $4{\times}4$ transform blocks by about 32%.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2009

H.264/AVC, a recently developed video compression standard, is used for various applications because of its high coding efficiency. Variable block mode plays important role in the high coding efficiency of H.264/AVC but involves significant computations to select the optimal mode. In this paper, a fast mode decision method for H.264/AVC P slices is presented. To reduce computations for mode decision, the proposed mode decision method skips the mode decision processes for small partition modes using distortions of SKIP mode and intra16x16 mode. The experimental results show that the proposed method can reduce encoding time up to 66.41% while maintaining compression efficiency.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.8-16
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• 2007

For the improvement of coding efficiency, the H.264/AVC video coding standard employs new coding tools compared with existing coding standards. However, due to these new coding tools, the complexity of K264/AVC standard encoder is greatly increased. Specifically, the inter/intra mode decision method using RDO(rate-distortion optimization) technique is one of the most complex parts in H.264/AVC. In this paper, we focus on the complexity reduction in macroblock mode decision. In the proposed method, we reduce the complexity of the $4{\times}4$ mode decision process using $4{\times}4$ simple square filters, and using spatial block correlation method. Additionally, exploiting the best mode of sub_macroblock in $Inter8{\times}8$ mode, we proposed an algorithm to eliminate some intra modes in current macroblock mode decision process. In addition, we employed a method to raise the probability to select SKIP, $Intra16{\times}16$, and $Intra16{\times}16$ modes which usually show low complexity and low bitrate compared with other modes. From the simulation results, the proposed algorithm reduce the encoding time by maximum 83% of total, and reduce the bitrate of the overall sequences by $8{\sim}10%$ on the average compared with existing coding methods.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.1093-1104
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• 2014

The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a new video coding standard that can provide much better compression efficiency than its predecessor H.264/AVC. However, it is computationally more intensive due to the use of flexible quadtree coding unit structure and more choices of prediction modes. In this paper, a fast intraframe coding scheme is proposed for HEVC. Firstly, a fast bottom-up pruning algorithm is designed to skip the mode decision process or reduce the candidate modes at larger block size coding unit. Then, a low complexity rough mode decision process is adopted to choose a small candidate set, followed by early DC and Planar mode decision and mode filtering to further reduce the number of candidate modes. The proposed method is evaluated by the HEVC reference software HM8.2. Averaging over 5 classes of HEVC test sequences, 41.39% encoding time saving is achieved with only 0.77% bitrate increase.

• 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.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.611-623
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• 2007

The H.264|AVC standard incorporates an intra prediction tool into inter frame coding. However, this leads to excessive amount of increase in encoding time, thus resulting in the difficulty in real-time implementation of software encoders. In this paper, we first propose an early decision on intra prediction coding and a fast intra prediction method using the characteristics of block contents and the context of neighboring block modes for the intra prediction in the inter frame coding of H.264/AVC. Basically, the proposed methods determine a skip condition on whether the $4{\times}4$ intra prediction is to be used in the inter frame coding by considering the content characteristics of each block to be encoded and the context of its neighboring blocks. The performance of our proposed methods is compared with the Joint Model reference software version 11.0 of H.264|AVC. The experimental results show that our proposed methods allow for 41.63% reduction in the total encoding time with negligible amounts of PSNR drops and bitrate increases, compared to the original Joint Model reference software version 11.0.