H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Encoder Parameter Selection Algorithms for Complexity Distortion Tradeoff

Abstract

The H.264 encoder has input parameters that determine the bit rate and distortion of the compressed video and the encoding complexity. A set of encoder parameters is referred to as a parameter setting. We previously proposed two offline algorithms for choosing H.264 encoder parameter settings that have distortion-complexity performance close to the parameter settings obtained from an exhaustive search, but take significantly fewer encodings. However they generate only a few parameter settings. If there is no available parameter settings for a given encode time, the encoder will need to use a lower complexity parameter setting resulting in a decrease in peak-signal-tonoise-ratio (PSNR). In this paper, we propose two algorithms for finding additional parameter settings over our previous algorithm and show that they improve the PSNR by up to 0.71 dB and 0.43 dB, respectively. We test both our algorithms on Linux and PocketPC platforms.

A generic, comprehensive and granular decoder complexity model for the H.264/AVC standard

“…The number of executions of this process (N Run_ Before ) is proportional to the total number of non-zero coefficients (TotalCoeffs) and total number of zeros before the highest nonzero coefficient (Totzeros). Considering the number of search operations for each combination of (TotalCoeffs, Totzeros) and using the curve fitting tool of MATLAB, we have extracted the macroblock level complexity parameter of this process as shown in formula (12).…”

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

“…The authors propose two fast approaches that do not require an exhaustive evaluation of encoder configurations. An extension of this work is presented in [19] following the same principles. In [20], an allocation of computational resources based on a virtual buffer is proposed.…”

A Machine Learning based Framework for Parameter based Multi-Objective Optimisation of Video CODECs

“…An improvement to the work presented in [8] was proposed by the same authors in [4], in which two further algorithms for finding additional parameter settings for the GBFOS-basic algorithm were presented. However, a significant constraint of the work of [7,3] is its limited use only within two constraints namely, complexity and video quality.…”

“…In [3] it was shown that the approach presented in [4] cannot be easily extended to other video encoders. It presented a novel power-rate-distortion (P-R-D) optimization algorithm that can be used to minimize energy consumption of delay tolerant applications in portable video communication.…”