Complexity reduction in the H.264/AVC using highly adaptive fast mode decision based on macroblock motion activity

Amina, Serir; Mokhtar, Nibouche; Abdellah, Skoudarli; Skoudarli, Abdellah; Nibouche, Mokhtar; Serir, Amina

Abstract

© 2015 SPIE and IS and T. The H.264/AVC video coding standard is used in a wide range of applications from video conferencing to high-definition television according to its high compression efficiency. This efficiency is mainly acquired from the newly allowed prediction schemes including variable block modes. However, these schemes require a high complexity to select the optimal mode. Consequently, complexity reduction in the H.264/AVC encoder has recently become a very challenging task in the video compression domain, especially when implementing the encoder in real-time applications. Fast mode decision algorithms play an important role in reducing the overall complexity of the encoder. In this paper, we propose an adaptive fast intermode algorithm based on motion activity, temporal stationarity, and spatial homogeneity. This algorithm predicts the motion activity of the current macroblock from its neighboring blocks and identifies temporal stationary regions and spatially homogeneous regions using adaptive threshold values based on content video features. Extensive experimental work has been done in high profile, and results show that the proposed source-coding algorithm effectively reduces the computational complexity by 53.18% on average compared with the reference software encoder, while maintaining the high-coding efficiency of H.264/AVC by incurring only 0.097 dB in total peak signal-to-noise ratio and 0.228% increment on the total bit rate.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 21, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2015
• Journal: Journal of Electronic Imaging
• Print ISSN: 1017-9909
• Electronic ISSN: 1560-229X
• Publisher: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 063015
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.24.6.063015
• Keywords: macroblock, H.264/AVC
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/844464
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.24.6.063015