Complexity scalable motion estimation control for H.264/AVC

Abstract

Abstract-Guaranteeing real-time performance for video encoding on platforms with limited resources is becoming increasingly important for consumer electronics applications. In this paper, an extension of an H.264/AVC encoder with complexity scalable motion estimation (ME) control is presented. An upper bound on the complexity of encoding a single frame is achieved by restricting Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) computations performed during ME and trading complexity allocation per frame for output quality. Allocation based on residual, i.e. SAD distortion of the final ME match before quantization, of the co-located macroblock in the previous frame outperforms other approaches in the literature in video quality.

Mode Decision-Based Algorithm for Complexity Control in H.264/AVC

“…Additionally, the encoder drops frames when the complexity target cannot be met. In [17] a complexity scalable video encoder that is capable of adapting on-the-fly to the available computational resources is presented. Specifically, this algorithm works at both frame and MB levels.…”

“…The proposed algorithm, as a few of the previously mentioned ( [16], [17]), relies on a parameter estimation process that is carried out on-the-fly, avoiding both the generalization problems inherent to an off-line estimation and the computational cost associated with the training process. In this manner, the algorithm can easily adapt to changes in both target complexity and video content.…”