Selective Intra Prediction Mode Decision for H.264/AVC Encoders

Authors: Jun Sung Park, Hyo Jung Song

Abstract:

H.264/AVC offers a considerably higher improvement in coding efficiency compared to other compression standards such as MPEG-2, but computational complexity is increased significantly. In this paper, we propose selective mode decision schemes for fast intra prediction mode selection. The objective is to reduce the computational complexity of the H.264/AVC encoder without significant rate-distortion performance degradation. In our proposed schemes, the intra prediction complexity is reduced by limiting the luma and chroma prediction modes using the directional information of the 16×16 prediction mode. Experimental results are presented to show that the proposed schemes reduce the complexity by up to 78% maintaining the similar PSNR quality with about 1.46% bit rate increase in average.

Keywords: Video encoding, H.264, Intra prediction.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1055761

References:

[1] ITU-T Recommendation H.264 & ISO/IEC 14496-10 (MPEG-4) AVC, "Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audiovisual Services," (version 1: 2003, version 2: 2004) version 3: 2005.
[2] S. Kwon, A. Tamhankar, K.R.Rao, "Overview of H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10"
[3] T. Halbach, "Performance Comparison: H.26L Intra Coding vs. JPEG2000", ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 and ITU-T SG16 Q.6, JVT 4th meeting Klagenfurt, Austria, July 2002.
[4] Zhang. Y, Dai. F, Lin. S, "Fast 4×4 intra-prediction mode selection for H.264", Multimedia and Expo, 2004. ICME '04. 2004 IEEE International Conference on Volume 2, 27-30 June 2004 Page(s):1151 - 1154 Vol.2
[5] Feng Pan, Xiao Lin, Susanto Rahardja, Keng Pang Lim, Z. G. Li, Dajun Wu, Si Wu, "Fast mode decision algorithm for intraprediction in H.264/AVC video coding", Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on Volume 15, Issue 7, pp. 813-822, July 2005.
[6] G. J. Sullivan, P. Topiwala and A. Luthra "The H.264/AVC advanced video coding standard: Overview and introduction to the fidelity range extensions", SPIE Conf. on applications of digital image processing XXVII, vol. 5558, pp. 53-74, Aug. 2004.
[7] Changsung Kim, Qing Li, C. C. Jay Kuo, "Fast Intra-prediction model selection for H.264 codec," SPIE International Symposium ITCOM 2003 , Orlando, Florida, Sept. 7-11, 2003.
[8] Iain E G Richardson, "H.264 and MPEG-4 Video Compression", John Wiley & Sons, pp. 180-183, 2003.
[9] Yu-Wen Huang, Bing-Yu Hsieh, Tung-Chien Chen, and Liang-Gee Chen, Fellow, IEEE / Analysis, Fast Algorithm, and VLSI Architecture Design for H.264/AVC Intra Frame Coder / IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 15, NO. 3, MARCH 2005.
[10] H.264/AVC reference software JM 9.6, Jul. 2005