Fast Motion Estimation Based on Content Property for Low-Complexity H.265/HEVC Encoder

Zhaoqing PAN, Jianjun LEI, Yun ZHANG, Xingming SUN, Sam KWONG

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

220 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The high definition (HD) and ultra HD videos can be widely applied in broadcasting applications. However, with the increased resolution of video, the volume of the raw HD visual information data increases significantly, which becomes a challenge for storage, processing, and transmitting the HD visual data. The state-of-the-art video compression standard-H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) compresses the raw HD visual data efficiently, while the high compression rate comes at the cost of heavy computation load. Hence, reducing the encoding complexity becomes vital for the H.265/HEVC encoder to be used in broadcasting applications. In this paper, based on the best motion vector selection correlation among the different size prediction modes, we propose a fast motion estimation (ME) method to reduce the encoding complexity of the H.265/HEVC encoder. First, according to the prediction unit (PU) partition type, all PUs are classified into two classes, parent PU and children PUs, respectively. Then, based on the best motion vector selection correlation between the parent PU and children PUs, the block matching search process of the children PUs is adaptively skipped if their parent PU chooses the initial search point as its final optimal motion vector in the ME process. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves an average of 20% ME time saving as compared with the original HM-TZSearch. Meanwhile, the rate distortion performance degradation is negligible.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)675-684
JournalIEEE Transactions on Broadcasting
Volume62
Issue number3
Early online date28 Jun 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2016
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61501246, Grant 61271324, Grant 61471348, and Grant 61232016, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China under Grant BK20150930, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China under Grant 15KJB510019, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province of China under Grant F2015202311, in part by the Project through the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, in part by the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology under Grant 2015r012; and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province for Distinguished Young Scholar under Grant 2016A030306022. (Corresponding author: Jianjun Lei.)

Keywords

  • fast motion estimation
  • H.265/HEVC
  • prediction unit
  • Video compression

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