Fast Mode Decision of Inter-Prediction for Enhancement Layer in SHVC

Abstract

In the scalable extension of H.265/HEVC, the inter-mode decision process of the enhancement layer (EL) results in greatly increased computing complexity. A fast inter-mode decision algorithm for Scalable High Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) is proposed to achieve early termination for inter-mode selection based on temporal dependency and motion activity. Statistical results indicate that a Prediction Unit (PU) in the EL is more likely to be coded with the same mode as its temporally co-located PU in the same layer, especially when the movement of the PU is slow. Based on an adaptive double thresholds scheme, the motion complexity can be categorized to three types and the number of inter-mode candidate can be reduced. Simulation results show that the encoding time reduction can be up to 47.29% compared with the original SHM encoder, while the degradation in coding efficiency is acceptable.