Inter-view prediction of coding tree depth for HEVC-based multiview video coding

Seeking for higher encoding efficiency, the emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard has adopted new encoding techniques such as recursive quadtree structure, flexible block partitioning and larger size blocks. However, this improved efficiency leads to greater computational complexity. This paper deals with complexity reduction of the HEVC-based multiview video coding proposing a new inter-view prediction technique, fully compliant with the HEVC standard. This new technique uses the coding unit (CU) tree depths used in the base view as a depth threshold to be used in the dependent views. When compared to HEVC simulcast the proposed method achieves a complexity reduction of up to 50.32%, at the cost of an average BD-PSNR loss of 0.03 dB.