Fast intra-encoding algorithm for High Efficiency Video Coding

The emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard provides equivalent subjective quality with about 50% bit rate reduction compared to the H.264/AVC High profile. However, the improvement of coding efficiency is obtained at the expense of increased computational complexity. This paper presents a fast intra-encoding algorithm for HEVC, which is composed of the following four techniques. Firstly, an early termination technique for coding unit (CU) depth decision is proposed based on the depth of neighboring CUs and the comparison results of rate distortion (RD) costs between the parent CU and part of its child CUs. Secondly, the correlation of intra-prediction modes between neighboring PUs is exploited to accelerate the intra-prediction mode decision for HEVC intra-coding and the impact of the number of mode candidates after the rough mode decision (RMD) process in HM is studied in our work. Thirdly, the TU depth range is restricted based on the probability of each TU depth and one redundant process is removed in the TU depth selection process based on the analysis of the HEVC reference software. Finally, the probability of each case for the intra-transform skip mode is studied to accelerate the intra-transform skip mode decision. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can provide about 50% time savings with only 0.5% BD-rate loss on average when compared to HM 11.0 for the Main profile all-intra-configuration. Parts of these techniques have been adopted into the HEVC reference software. & 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.