• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1121-1125
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• 2004

This paper is studied the fast block mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC. The fast block mode decision algorithm is consist of block range decision and merge algorithm. The block range decision algorithm classifies the block over 8$\times$8 size or below for 16$\times$16 macroblock to decide the size and type of sub blocks. The block over 8$\times$8 size is divided into the blocks of 16$\times$8, 8$\times$16 and 16$\times$16 size using merging algorithm which is considered MVD(motion vector difference) of 8$\times$8 block. The sub block range decision reduces encoding arithmetic amount by 48.25% on the average more than the case not using block range decision.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.1405-1409
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• 2004

This paper is studied new block mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC. The fast block mode decision algorithm is consist of block range decision algorithm. The block range decision algorithm classifies the block over 8$\times$8 size or below for 16${\times}$16 macroblock to decide the size and type of sub blocks. As the sub blocks of 8$\times$8, 8r4, 4$\times$8 and 4$\times$4, which are the blocks below 8$\times$8 size, include important motion information, the exact sub block decision is required. RDC(RDO cost) is used as the matching parameter for the exact sub block decision. RDC is calculated with motion strength which is the mean value of neighbor pixels of each sub block. The sub block range decision reduces encoding arithmetic amount by 34.62% on the average more than the case not using block range decision. The block mode decision using motion strength shows improvement of PSNR of 0.05[dB].

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.29-36
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• 2003

In this paper, an efficient VLSI architecture for DCTQ module, which consists of 2D-DCT, quantization, AC/DC prediction block, scan conversion, inverse quantization and 2D-IDCT, is presented. The architecture of the module is designed to handle a macroblock data within 1064 cycles and suitable for MPEG-4 video codec handling 30 frame CIF image for both encoder and decoder simultaneously. Only single 1-D DCT/IDCT cores are used for the design instead of 2-D DCT/IDCT, respectively. 1-bit serial distributed arithmetic architecture is adopted for 1-D DCT/IDCT to reduce the hardware area in this architecture. To reduce the power consumption of DCTQ modu1e, we propose the method not to operate the DCTQ modu1e exploiting the SAE(sum of absolute error) value from motion estimation and cbp(coded block pattern). To reduce the AC/DC prediction memory size, the memory architecture and memory access method for AC/DC prediction block is proposed. As the result, the maximum utilization of hardware can be achieved, and power consumption can be minimized. The proposed design is operated on 27MHz clock. The experimental results show that the accuracy of DCT and IDCT meet the IEEE specification.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.441-449
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• 2007

In video coding, motion estimation is a process to estimate the pixel of the current frame from the reference frame, which affects directly the predictive quality and the encoding time. This paper is related to AHHS(Adaptive Hierarchical Hexagon Search) using spatio-temporal motion activity for fast motion estimation. The proposed method defines the spatio-temporal motion activity of the current macroblock using the motion vectors of its spatio-temporally adjacent macroblocks, and then conventional AHS(Adaptive Hexagon Search) is performed if the spatio-temporal motion activity is lower, otherwise, hierarchical hexagon search is performed on a multi-layered hierarchical space constructed by multiple sub-images with low frequency in wavelet transform. In the paper, based on computer simulation results for multiple video sequences with different motion characteristics, the performance of the proposed method was analysed and assessed in terms of the predictive quality and the computational time. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is both suitable for (quasi-) stationary and large motion searches. The proposed method could keep the merit of the adaptive hexagon search capable of fast estimating motion vectors and also adaptively reduce the local minima occurred in the video sequences with higher spatio-temporal motion activity.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.63-72
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose the bit-rate control algorithm for the block based image compression like H.263, H.263+ or MPEG-4. The proposed algorithm is designed to identify the quantization parameter set through the Lagrangian optimization technique based on the well-known linear source model. We set the Lagrangian cost function with the rates and distortion calculated from the linear source model. We calculate the quantization parameter set using the Vitervi algorithm to solve the Lagrangian optimization problem considering the Dquant method of H.263 and MPEG-4. The proposed algorithm improves the video quality by up to 1.5 dB compared with the TMN8 scheme, and is more effective in the video sources with dynamic activities than the consistent quality approaches.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.12C
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• pp.1669-1676
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• 2004

In H.264, 7 modes {16${\times}$16, 16${\times}$8, 8${\times}$16, 8${\times}$8, 8${\times}$4, 4${\times}$8, 4${\times}$4) are used to enhance the coding efficiency. The motion vector estimation with 7 modes may require huge computing time. In this paper, to speed up the motion vector estimation procedure while the high image quality remains, we propose a motion vector refinement scheme using the temporary motion vector generated with little computation. The proposed estimation process consists of three phases: Mode decision for a 16${\times}$16 macroblock, Composing a temporary motion vector, Refinement of the temporary motion vector. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by computer simulation. In the results, the encoding time consumed by the proposed scheme has been reduced significantly while the encoded video quality remains unchanged.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.1C
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• pp.37-47
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• 2009

When H.264 encoded video streams are transmitted over wireless network, packet loss is unavoidable. Responding on this environment, we propose methods to recover missed motion vector in the decoder: At first, A candidate vector set for missing macroblock is estimated from high correlation coefficient of neighboring motion vectors and missing block vectors the algorithm clusters candidate vectors through distances amongst motion vectors of neighboring blocks. Then the optimal candidate vector is determined by the median value of the clustered motion vector set. In next stage, from the candidate vector set, the final candidate vector of missing block is determined it has minimum distortion value considering directions of neighboring pixels' boundary. Test results showed that the proposed algorithm decreases the candidate motion vectors $23{\sim}61%$ and reduces $3{\sim}4sec$ on average processing(decoding) time comparing the existing H.264 codec. The PSNR, in terms of visual quality is similar to existing methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.595-598
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• 2005

MPEG-4 Visual is, and international standard for the object-based video compression, designed for supporting a wide range of applications from multimedia communication to HDTV. To control the minimum decoding complexity required at the decoder, the MPEG-4 Visual standard defines the co-called video buffering mechanism, which includes three video buffer models. Among them, the VCV(Video Complexity Verifier) defines the control of the processing speed for decoding of a macroblock, there are two models: VCV and B-VCV distinguishing the boundary and non-boundary MB. This paper presents the evaluation results of decoding complexity by measuring decoding time of a MB for rectangular, arbitrarily shaped video objects and the various types of objects supporting the resolution of HDTV using the optimized MPEG-4 Reference Software. The experimental results shows that decoding complexity varies depending on the coding type and more effective usage of decoding resources may be possible.

• 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 Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.956-965
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• 2008

H.264/AVC is the newest video coding standard of ITU-T VCEG and the ISO/IEC MPEG, offering a significant performance improvement over previous video coding standards. However, the computational complexity of H.264/AVC is drastically increased because of new technologies such as intra prediction, variable block size, quarter-pels motion estimation/compensation, etc. In this paper, we propose a fast intra prediction scheme which has two step processing. The first step is a fast block size decision which can be calculated only in one block without considering all cases of $4{\times}4$ block and $16{\times}16$ block. The complexity of the intra prediction can be reduced by using boundary difference values of macroblock. After selecting the block size, we can make mode decision using the neighbouring reference pixels and representative pixels of the block in the second step. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm saved on the average 41.5% encoding time without any significant PSNR losses.