• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.235-244
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• 2022

Many new techniques have been adopted in HEVC (High efficiency video coding) standard, such as quadtree-structured coding unit (CU), prediction unit (PU) partition, 35 intra-mode, and so on. To reduce computational complexity, the paper proposes two optimization algorithms which include fast CU depth range decision and fast PU partition mode decision. Firstly, depth range of CU is predicted according to spatial-temporal correlation. Secondly, we utilize the depth difference between the current CU and CU corresponding to the same position of adjacent frame for PU mode range selection. The number of traversal candidate modes is reduced. The experiment result shows the proposed algorithm obtains a lot of time reducing, and the loss of coding efficiency is inappreciable.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.89-96
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• 2016

The High Efficiency Video Coding (MPEG-H HEVC/ITU-T H.265) is the newest video coding standard which has the quadtree-structured coding unit (CU). The quadtree-structure splits a CU adaptively, and its optimum CU depth can be determined by rate-distortion optimization. Such HEVC encoding requires very high computational complexity for CU depth decision. Motivated that the blob detection, which is a well-known algorithm in computer vision, detects keypoints in pictures and decision of CU depth needs to consider high frequency energy distribution, in this paper, we propose to utilize these keypoints for fast CU depth decision. Experimental results show that 20% encoding time can be saved with only slightly increasing BDBR by 0.45% on all intra case.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1730-1747
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• 2018

Multi-view video plus depth (MVD) is a mainstream format of 3D scene representation in free viewpoint video systems. The advanced 3D extension of the high efficiency video coding (3D-HEVC) standard introduces new prediction tools to improve the coding performance of depth video. However, the depth video in 3D-HEVC is time consuming. To reduce the complexity of the depth video inter coding, we propose a fast coding unit (CU) size and mode decision algorithm. First, an off-line trained Bayesian model is built which the feature vector contains the depth levels of the corresponding spatial, temporal, and inter-component (texture-depth) neighboring largest CUs (LCUs). Then, the model is used to predict the depth level of the current LCU, and terminate the CU recursive splitting process. Finally, the CU mode search process is early terminated by making use of the mode correlation of spatial, inter-component (texture-depth), and inter-view neighboring CUs. Compared to the 3D-HEVC reference software HTM-10.0, the proposed algorithm reduces the encoding time of depth video and the total encoding time by 65.03% and 41.04% on average, respectively, with negligible quality degradation of the synthesized virtual view.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.484-492
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• 2016

The High efficiency video coding (HEVC) is the newest video coding standard that achieves coding efficiency higher than previous video coding standards such as H.264/AVC. In intra prediction, the prediction units (PUs) are derived from a large coding unit (LCU) which is partitioned into smaller coding units (CUs) sizing from 8x8 to 64x64 in a quad-tree structure. As they are divided until having the minimum depth, Optimum CU splitting is selected in RDO (Rate Distortion Optimization) process. In this process, HEVC demands high computational complexity. In this paper, to reduce the complexity of HEVC, we propose a fast CU mode decision (FCDD) for intra prediction by using FAST (Features from Accelerated Segment Test) corner detection. The proposed method reduces computational complexity with 53.73% of the computational time for the intra prediction while coding performance degradation with 0.7% BDBR is small compared to conventional HEVC.

• 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 Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.40-50
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• 2012

In this paper we propose the fast CU (Coding Unit) mode decision method. To reduce computational complexity and save encoding time of HEVC, we divided CU, PU (Prediction Unit) and TU (Transform Unit) decision process into two stages. In the first stage, because $2N{\times}2N$ PU mode is mostly selected among $2N{\times}2N$, $N{\times}2N$, $2N{\times}N$, $N{\times}N$ PU modes, proposed algorithm uses only $2N{\times}2N$ PU mode deciding depth of each CU in the LCU (Largest CU). And then, proposed method decides exact PU and TU modes at the depth level which is decided in the first stage. In addition, early skip decision rule is applied to the proposed method to obtain more efficient computational complexity reduction. The proposed method reduces computational complexity of the HEVC encoder by simplifying a CU depth decision method. We could obtain about 50% computational complexity reduction in comparison with HM 3.3 HEVC reference software while bitrate compressed by the proposed algorithm increases only 2%.

• 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.

• 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.19 no.5
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• pp.627-630
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• 2014

The latest video coding standard, high efficiency video coding (HEVC) achieves high coding efficiency by employing a quadtree-based coding unit (CU) block partitioning structure which allows recursive splitting into four equally sized blocks. At each depth level, each CU is partitioned into variable sized blocks of prediction units (PUs). However, the determination of the best CU partition for each coding tree unit (CTU) and the best PU mode for each CU causes a dramatic increase in computational complexity. To reduce such computational complexity, we propose a fast PU decision algorithm that early terminates PU search. The proposed method skips the computation of R-D cost for certain PU modes in the current CU based on the best mode and the rate-distortion (RD) cost of the upper depth CU. Experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the computational complexity of HM12.0 to 18.1% with only 0.2% increases in BD-rate.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.959-974
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• 2020

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) employs quadtree coding tree unit (CTU) structure to improve its coding efficiency, but at the same time, it also requires a very high computational complexity due to its exhaustive search processes for an optimal coding unit (CU) partition. With the aim of solving the problem, a fast CU size decision optimal algorithm based on neighborhood prediction is presented for HEVC in this paper. The contribution of this paper lies in the fact that we successfully use the partition information of neighborhood CUs in different depth to quickly determine the optimal partition mode for the current CU by neighborhood prediction technology, which can save much computational complexity for HEVC with negligible RD-rate (rate-distortion rate) performance loss. Specifically, in our scheme, we use the partition information of left, up, and left-up CUs to quickly predict the optimal partition mode for the current CU by neighborhood prediction technology, as a result, our proposed algorithm can effectively solve the problem above by reducing many unnecessary prediction and partition operations for HEVC. The simulation results show that our proposed fast CU size decision algorithm based on neighborhood prediction in this paper can reduce about 19.0% coding time, and only increase 0.102% BD-rate (Bjontegaard delta rate) compared with the standard reference software of HM16.1, thus improving the coding performance of HEVC.