Fast Algorithm with Early Termination CU Split and Mode Decision

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is the next-generation video coding standard, which introduced many new technologies such as tree structure coding unit and a variety of intra prediction mode. Compared with H.264/AVC, HEVC has achieved higher coding efficiency but requires a very high computational complexity. So this paper proposes a fast algorithm through early termination of the CU (Coding Unit) splitting and mode decision. Based on the research of image features, we use the variance of the input image to early terminate CU splitting. In addition, based on the analysis of candidate modes which were obtained by the rough mode decision, the adjacent mode is used to early terminate the RDO process to reduce the computational complexity. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm saves averagely about 40% of encoding time with neglecting degradation of coding performance.