Early Coding Unit–Splitting Termination Algorithm for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)

Abstract

A new-generation video coding standard, named HighEfficiency Video Coding (HEVC), has recently beendeveloped by JCT-VC. This new standard provides asignificant improvement in picture quality, especially forhigh-resolution videos. However, one the most importantchallenges in HEVC is time complexity. A quadtree-basedstructure is created for the encoding and decodingprocesses and the rate-distortion (RD) cost is calculatedfor all possible dimensions of coding units in the quadtree.This provides a high encoding quality, but also causescomputational complexity. We focus on a reductionscheme of the computational complexity and propose anew approach that can terminate the quadtree-basedstructure early, based on the RD costs of the parent andcurrent levels. Our proposed algorithm is compared withHEVC Test Model version 10.0 software and a previouslyproposed algorithm. Experimental results show that ouralgorithm provides a significant time reduction forencoding, with only a small loss in video quality.