Fast Coding Strategy for HEVC by Motion Features and Saliency Applied on Difference Between Successive Image Blocks

Abstract

Introducing a number of innovative and powerful coding tools, the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard promises double compression efficiency, compared to its predecessor H.264, with similar perceptual quality. The increased computational time complexity is an important issue for the video coding research community as well. An attempt to reduce this complexity of HEVC is adopted in this paper, by efficient selection of appropriate block-partitioning modes based on motion features and the saliency applied to the difference between successive image blocks. As this difference gives us the explicit visible motion and salient information, we develop a cost function by combining the motion features and image difference salient feature. The combined features are then converted into area of interest (AOI) based binary pattern for the current block. This pattern is then compared with a previously defined codebook of binary pattern templates for a subset of mode selection. Motion estimation (ME) and motion compensation (MC) are performed only on the selected subset of modes, without exhaustive exploration of all modes available in HEVC. The experimental results reveal a reduction of 42 % encoding time complexity of HEVC encoder with similar subjective and objective image quality.