• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.38 no.5
• /
• pp.807-817
• /
• 2016

A novel fast algorithm is suggested for a coding unit (CU) mode decision using pseudo rate-distortion based on a separated encoding structure in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). A conventional HEVC encoder requires a large computational time for a CU mode prediction because prediction and transformation procedures are applied to obtain a rate-distortion cost. Hence, for the practical application of HEVC encoding, it is necessary to significantly reduce the computational time of CU mode prediction. As described in this paper, under the proposed separated encoder structure, it is possible to decide the CU prediction mode without a full processing of the prediction and transformation to obtain a rate-distortion cost based on a suitable condition. Furthermore, to construct a suitable condition to improve the encoding speed, we employ a pseudo rate-distortion estimation based on a Hadamard transformation and a simple quantization. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a 38.68% reduction in the total encoding time with a similar coding performance to that of the HEVC reference model.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.697-702
• /
• 2010

Contour artifact is known as the unintentional result of quantizing a flat area that has smooth gradients. In this letter, a decontouring algorithm is proposed to efficiently remove false contours that occur in typical block-based video coding applications. First, the algorithm goes through a refinement stage to determine candidate blocks probably having noticeable false contours with different kinds of features in a block. Then, pseudo-random noise masking is applied to those blocks to mitigate the contour artifacts. This block-based selective decontouring can efficiently remove the unnecessary processing of those blocks that have no false contour, which incidentally ensures a minor penalty in visual quality and computational complexity. The proposed algorithm was demonstrated, integrated into H.264/AVC, that visual quality can be significantly enhanced with an ignorable rate-distortion (RD) loss and an minor increase in computational complexity.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.23 no.6
• /
• pp.768-779
• /
• 2018

In this paper, we propose a novel video quality function for video processing based on MSSSIM to select an appropriate video processing filter and to accommodate multiple processing filters to each pixel block in a picture frame by a mathematical selection law so as to maintain video quality and to reduce the bitrate of compressed video. In viewpoint of video compression, since the properties of video quality and bitrate is different for each picture of video frames and for each areas in the same frame, it is difficult for the video filter with single property to satisfy the object of increasing video quality and decreasing bitrate. Consequently, to maintain the subjective video quality in spite of decreasing bitrate, we propose the methodology about the MSSSIM as the measure of subjective video quality, the KL-Divergence as the measure of bitrate, and the combination method of those two measurements. Moreover, using the proposed combinatorial measurement, when we use the multiple image filters with mutually different properties as a pre-processing filter for video, we can verify that it is possible to compress video with maintaining the video quality under decreasing the bitrate, as possible.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.3E
• /
• pp.131-139
• /
• 2010

This paper proposes a novel spectral hole substitution technique for low bit-rate audio coding. The spectral holes frequently occurring in relatively weak energy bands due to zero bit quantization result in severe quality degradation, especially for harmonic signals such as speech vowels. The enhanced aacPlus (EAAC) audio codec artificially adjusts the minimum signal-to-mask ratio (SMR) to reduce the number of spectral holes, but it still produces noisy sound. The proposed method selectively predicts the spectral shapes of hole bands using either intra-band correlation, i.e. harmonically related coefficients nearby or inter-band correlation, i.e. previous frames. For the bands that have low prediction gain, only the energy term is quantized and spectral shapes are replaced by pseudo random values in the decoding stage. To minimize perceptual distortion caused by spectral mismatching, the criterion of the just noticeable level difference (JNLD) and spectral similarity between original and predicted shapes are adopted for quantizing the energy term. Simulation results show that the proposed method implemented into the EAAC baseline coder significantly improves speech quality at low bit-rates while keeping equivalent quality for mixed and music contents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
• /
• 2014.11a
• /
• pp.15-17
• /
• 2014

본 논문에서는 하드웨어의 제한된 자원을 이용하여 HEVC 코덱을 구현할 때 DCT 와 엔트로피 부호화를 사용하지 않고 율 및 왜곡값을 예측하여 고효율의 부호화를 수행하는 방법에 대하여 제안한다. HEVC 는 기존의 부호화기에 비하여 계층적 부호화 구조와 함께 큰 블록 크기를 갖는 DCT 와 엔트로피 부호화를 반복적으로 수행하기 때문에 하드웨어 구현 시 그 복잡도가 매우 크게 증가한다. 먼저 DCT 는 하다마드변환 행렬과 또 다른 정규 직교 변환 행렬의 곱으로 표현될 수 있는 성질을 이용하여 부호화 변환 시 생성된 하드마드변환 행렬에 저복잡도의 정규 직교 변환 행렬을 곱하여 DCT 변환 계수를 생성한 후 변환 및 양자화를 수행한다. 왜곡값의 경우, 이 때 생성된 양자화 계수와 변환 계수 간의 차이를 변환도메인에서 제곱합을 이용하여 계산하여 역변환을 생략함으로써 복잡도를 감소시킬 수 있다. 또한 텍스처에 대한 비트율 예측은 각 CU 블록내의 양자화 계수의 수를 더하여 계산하여 엔트로피를 수행하지 않고 예측할 수 있다. 그리고 비 텍스처에 대한 비트율 예측의 경우 움직임벡터의 비트에 대한 Pseudo CABAC 코드를 수행하여 예측할 수 있다. 이러한 저 복잡도의 텍스처 및 비텍스처 비트와 왜곡을 예측함으로써 하다마드변환만을 이용하여 부호화하였을 때에 비해 최대 33%의 비트율 감소를 얻을 수 있었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
• /
• 2018.06a
• /
• pp.169-172
• /
• 2018

본 논문에서는 동영상 화질을 최대한 유지하면서 압축 비트량 절감을 효율적으로 이루기 위해 복수개의 영상처리 필터를 영상의 블록에 따라 선택적으로 적용하고, 영상처리 필터의 선택을 위한 MSSIM 및 KL Divergence 기반의 영상 처리 평가 함수를 제안한다. 영상압축의 경우, 영상 내 특징에 따라 화질과 비트량 절감의 특성이 다르며, 이에 따라 단일 목적을 가진 영상처리 필터로서는 화질을 유지하면서, 비트량 절감이라는 목적을 동시에 만족 시키기 어렵다. 이에 따라, 주관적 화질을 최대한 유지하면서, 비트량을 절감시키기 위해 주관적 화질 측도로서 MSSSIM(Multi-scale Structural Similarity)를 사용하고 비트량 측도를 위하여 KL Divergence 를 사용함과 동시에 두 가지 척도를 하나의 척도로 결합시키기 위한 방법을 제안한다. 아울러 제안한 측도를 사용하여 서로 다른 특성을 가진 영상처리 필터를 전처리 필터로 사용할 경우, 주관적 화질을 최대한 유지하면서 비트량 절감을 유지할 수 있도록 동영상 압축이 가능함을 확인할 수 있었다.