Low-Complexity Mode Decision for MVC

The finalized international standard for multiview video coding (MVC) is an extension of H.264. In the joint model of MVC, variable size motion estimation (ME) and disparity estimation (DE) are introduced to achieve the highest coding efficiency with the cost of very high computational complexity. A low complexity mode decision algorithm is proposed to reduce complexity of ME and DE. An experimental analysis is performed to study inter-view correlation in the coding information such as the prediction mode and rate-distortion (RD) cost. Based on the correlation, we propose four efficient mode decision techniques, including early SKIP mode decision, adaptive early termination, fast mode size decision, and selective intra coding in inter frame. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce computational complexity of MVC while maintaining almost the same RD performance.