Complexity Adaptive H.264 Encoding for Light Weight Streams

Emerging video coding standard H.264 achieves significant efficiency improvements, at the expense of greatly increased computational complexity at both the encoder and the decoder. Most prior works focus on reducing the encoder complexity only. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to reduce the decoder complexity without changing any implementation of standard-compliant decoders. Our solution, called complexity adaptive motion estimation and mode decision (CAMED), involves several core components, including a rigorous rate-distortion-complexity optimization framework, complexity cost modeling, and a complexity control algorithm. Such components are incorporated in the encoder side. Experiments over diverse videos and bit rates have shown that our method can achieve significant decoding complexity reduction (up to 60% of interpolation computation) with little degradation in video quality (les 0.2 dB) and very minor impact on the encoder complexity. Results also show that our method can be readily combined with other methods to reduce the complexity at both encoder and decoder