ICIP 2006, Atlanta, GA
 

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Atlanta Conv. & Vis. Bureau

 

Technical Program

Paper Detail

Paper:MA-L2.2
Session:H.264 Video Coding - I
Time:Monday, October 9, 10:00 - 10:20
Presentation: Lecture
Title: RATE-DISTORTION AND COMPLEXITY JOINT OPTIMIZATION FOR FAST MOTION ESTIMATION IN H.264 VIDEO CODING
Authors: Hasan Ates; Isik University 
 Berkay Kanberoglu; Isik University 
 Yucel Altunbasak; Georgia Institute of Technology 
Abstract: H.264 video coding standard offers several coding modes including inter-prediction modes that use macroblock partitions with variable block sizes. Choosing a rate-distortion optimal mode among these possibilities contributes significantly to the superior coding efficiency of the H.264 encoder. Unfortunately, searching for optimal motion vectors of each possible subblock incurs a heavy computational cost. In this paper, in order to reduce the complexity of integer-pel motion estimation, we propose a rate-distortion and complexity joint optimization method that selects for each MB a subset of partitions to evaluate during motion estimation. This selection is based on simple measures of spatio-temporal activity within the MB. The procedure is optimized to minimize mode estimation error at a certain level of computational complexity. Simulation results show that the algorithm speeds up the motion estimation module by a factor of up to 20 with little loss in coding efficiency.