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SIMD-based low bit-depth motion estimation with application to HEVC

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Abstract

Motion estimation (ME) is a crucial stage in video encoding process since it is the main contributor to high compression ratios. However, it is a very time-consuming operation when a full-search-based block-motion estimation approach is adopted in the encoding process. There are many low bit-depth representation ME approaches in the literature which aim to speed-up this processing without scarifying encoding quality because of their possible efficient hardware implementations. In this paper, we present a single instruction multiple data (SIMD)-based methodology specifically designed for low bit-depth ME approaches and show that this approach can be efficiently implemented in software. The proposed method provides encoding time-savings, up to 68%, according to the full search-based motion estimation approach and has less encoding time, up to 15%, with respect to the fast sparse search-based motion estimation approach. Our experiments on state-of-the-art video encoding standard HEVC clearly show that low bit-depth approaches can have potential in software implementations as well.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aircraft Electrical and Electronics, Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey

    Ramazan Duvar

  2. Department of Electronics and Telecom. Engineering, Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey

    Ayhan Küçükmanisa, Aysun Taşyapı Çelebi & Oğuzhan Urhan

  3. Department of Computer Engineering, Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey

    Orhan Akbulut

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  1. Ramazan Duvar
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  2. Ayhan Küçükmanisa
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  3. Orhan Akbulut
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  4. Aysun Taşyapı Çelebi
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  5. Oğuzhan Urhan
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Correspondence to Ramazan Duvar.

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Duvar, R., Küçükmanisa, A., Akbulut, O. et al. SIMD-based low bit-depth motion estimation with application to HEVC. SIViP 17, 1449–1456 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-022-02353-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-022-02353-6

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