Energy-aware scheme for the 3D-HEVC depth maps prediction

Edge-aware depth motion estimation — A complexity reduction scheme for 3D-HEVC

“…To the best of our knowledge, there is no other work for the motion estimation of depth maps targeting complexity reduction and coding efficiency beyond our previous works [5] and [6]. Besides, these works propose to use only a classic lightweight fast algorithm focusing on reducing the encoding complexity of …”

“…3 that when encoding a homogeneous region block, the heat map shows smooth changes, with large regions containing low SAD values around the center of the search area. Considering it, homogeneous regions in depth map can be encoded using center-biased (i.e., algorithms that start searching in the center of the search area) light-weight fast ME algorithms, such as I-SDSP or DS, as described in [5] and [6], achieving near-optimal results in fewer SAD comparisons than TZS. However, the analysis of the SAD heat map of an edge in Fig.…”

“…Our previous works [5] and [6] demonstrate that ME was developed focusing on texture coding, which presents a complex behavior and concludes that simpler algorithms can be used for ME of depth maps with small impact on the coding efficiency. These same works employ lightweight fast ME algorithms, such as the Iterative-Small Diamond Search Pattern (I-SDSP) that reduces the coding effort with negligible impact on video quality, instead of using the Test Zone Search (TZS) algorithm [7].…”

“…These same works employ lightweight fast ME algorithms, such as the Iterative-Small Diamond Search Pattern (I-SDSP) that reduces the coding effort with negligible impact on video quality, instead of using the Test Zone Search (TZS) algorithm [7]. However, the works [5] and [6] suppose that all depth-encoding blocks require low execution complexity and ignore the fact that edges tend to be harder to predict than homogenous regions in depth maps. Based on this fact, this paper proposes a new complexity reduction scheme for depth maps ME called Edge-Aware Depth Motion Estimation (E-ADME).…”

“…• Analysis of the motion estimation in depth maps edges -the previous works [5] and [6] only considered that depth maps coding can use simpler ME algorithms, considering a depth map as homogeneous regions. This paper presents an analysis to observe the depth maps ME behavior and concludes that edge region is harder for encoding than homogeneous region.…”