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Fast CU size decision and mode decision algorithm for intra prediction in HEVC

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Abstract

In the intra prediction process, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) provides a quadtree-based coding unit (CU) block partitioning structure and up to 35 kinds of prediction modes to improve the coding performance. These technologies improve the coding efficiency significantly while the coding complexity is simultaneously increased rapidly as well. In this paper, a novel fast CU size decision and mode decision algorithm is proposed for the intra prediction of HEVC. The overall algorithm consists of two processes, the fast CU size decision and fast mode decision. In the fast CU size decision process, we adopt an adaptive discretization total variation (DTV) threshold-based CU size determination algorithm to skip some specific depth levels. In the fast mode decision process, an orientation gradient-based mode decision is proposed to reduce the candidate modes involved in the rough mode decision (RMD) and the rate distortion optimization (RDO) process. The experimental results on the HEVC reference software HM demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the coding time with negligible performance loss.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Hunan Province Science and Technology Planning Project (nos. 2014FJ6047 and 2014GK3030), the Science Research Key Project of the Education Department of Hunan Province (nos. 13A107 and 15A007), and the Changsha Science and Technology Planning Project (no. K1403028-11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer & Communication Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha, China

    Yun Song, Ye Zeng, Xueyu Li & Biye Cai

  2. School of Information Science & Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Yun Song & Gaobo Yang

  3. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Processing of Big Data on Transportation, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha, China

    Yun Song, Ye Zeng, Xueyu Li & Biye Cai

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  1. Yun Song
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  2. Ye Zeng
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  3. Xueyu Li
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  4. Biye Cai
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  5. Gaobo Yang
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Correspondence to Yun Song.

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Song, Y., Zeng, Y., Li, X. et al. Fast CU size decision and mode decision algorithm for intra prediction in HEVC. Multimed Tools Appl 76, 2001–2017 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3155-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3155-7

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