• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.5C
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• pp.536-541
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• 2007

In video coding standard H.264/AVC, motion estimation using multiple reference pictures improves compression efficiency but the efficiency depends upon image content not the number of reference pictures. So, the motion estimation includes a large amount of computation of no worth according to image. This paper proposes fast motion estimation algorithm that removes worthless computation in the motion estimation using multiple reference pictures. The proposed algorithm classifies a block into valid and invalid blocks for the multiple reference pictures and removes the workless computation by applying a single reference picture to the invalid block. To estimate the proposed algorithm's performance, image quality, bit rate, and motion estimation time are compared with ones of the conventional algorithm in the reference software JM 9.5. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can considerably save about 38.67% the averaged motion estimation time while keeping the image quality and the bit rate, whose are average values are -0.02dB and -0.77% respectively, as good as the conventional algorithm.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.716-724
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a fast decision method of maximum coding depth decision and reference frame selection in HEVC. To reduce computational complexity and encoding time of HEVC, two methods are proposed. In the first method, the maximum depth of each coding unit (CU) in a largest CU (LCU) is constrained by using the maximum coding depth used by adjacent LCUs based on the assumption that the spatial correlation is very high and rate-distortion (R-D) cost. And we constrain the number of reference pictures for prediction unit (PU) performing motion estimation by using the motion information of the upper depth PU. The proposed methods reduce computational complexity of the HEVC encoder by constraining the maximum coding depth and the reference frame. We could achieve about 39% computational complexity reduction with marginal bitrate increase of 1.2% in the comparison with HM6.1 HEVC reference software.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.41-49
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• 2008

H.264/AVC supports variable block motion compensation, multiple reference images, 1/4-pixel motion vector accuracy, and in-loop deblocking filter, compared with the existing compression technologies. While these coding technologies are major functions of compression rate improvement, they lead to high complexity at the same time. For the H.264 video coding technology to be actually applied on low-end / low-bit rates terminals more extensively, it is essential to improve tile coding speed. Currently the deblocking filter that can improve the moving picture's subjective image quality to a certain degree is used on low-end terminals to a limited extent due to computational complexity. In this paper, a performance improvement method of the deblocking filter that efficiently reduces the blocking artifacts occurred during the compression of low-bit rates digital motion pictures is suggested. In the method proposed in this paper, the image's spatial correlational characteristics are extracted by using the variable block information of motion compensation; the filtering is divided into 4 modes according to the characteristics, and adaptive filtering is executed in the divided regions. The proposed deblocking method reduces the blocking artifacts, prevents excessive blurring effects, and improves the performance about $30{\sim}40%$ compared with the existing method.