Hierarchical fast selection of intraframe prediction mode in HEVC

In the new HEVC standard, there are 35 intraframe prediction modes. Therefore, real-time implementations need fast mode pre-selection to reduce the computational load of cost comparison for individual modes. In this paper, a simple technique is proposed to reduce the complexity of the Unified Intra Prediction by decreasing the mode candidate number evaluated in the Rough Mode Decision step. We call this approach hierarchical as we decrease stepwise the angles between the directions of the prediction modes that are tested. Obviously, the fast mode selection results in significant complexity reduction obtained at the cost of choosing a sub-optimum mode related to slightly reduced compression performance. In the paper, it is proposed how to calculate the trade-off between encoder complexity and compression performance, using the ratio of relative coding time reduction and average bitrate increase estimated for constant decoded video quality. Extensive experiments prove that this ratio is much higher for the proposed technique than for many other techniques from the references

Key-point Detection based Fast CU Decision for HEVC Intra Encoding

As the most recent video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) adopts various novel techniques, including a quad-tree based coding unit (CU) structure and additional angular modes used for intra encoding. These newtechniques achieve a notable improvement in coding efficiency at the penalty of significant computational complexity increase. Thus, a fast HEVC coding algorithm is highly desirable. In this paper, we propose a fast intra CU decision algorithm for HEVC to reduce the coding complexity, mainly based on a key-point detection. A CU block is considered to have multiple gradients and is early split if corner points are detected inside the block. On the other hand, a CU block without corner points is treated to be terminated when its RD cost is also small according to statistics of the previous frames. The proposed fast algorithm achieves over 62% encoding time reduction with 3.66%, 2.82%, and 2.53% BD-Rate loss for Y, U, and V components, averagely. The experimental results show that the proposed method is efficient to fast decide CU size in HEVC intra coding, even though only static parameters are applied to all test sequences