Fast mode decision algorithm for depth coding in 3D video systems using H.264/AVC

Abstract

Complexity of multiview coding is proportional to the number of cameras. It makes difficult to implement multiview sequences in real applications. Thus, we propose a fast mode decision algorithm for both intra and inter prediction to reduce the computational complexity of H.264/AVC for depth video coding. By analyzing the depth variation, we classify the depth video into depth-continuity and depth-discontinuity regions. We determine a threshold value for classifying these regions by experiments. Since the depth-continuity region has an imbalance in the mode distribution, we limit the mode candidates. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm reduces the encoding time by up to 78% and 84% for the intra and inter frames, respectively, with negligible PSNR loss and slight bit-rate increase, compared to JMVC 8.3. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.