Complexity reduction for the 3D-HEVC depth maps coding

This paper presents a qualitative discussion of the depth maps properties that can be considered to achieve complexity reduction for 3D-High Efficiency Video Coding (3D-HEVC) depth maps coding. Both intra and inter-frame predictions are considered in this discussion that conduced to the proposition of two simple complexity reduction techniques: the Simplified Edge Detector (SED) and the Diamond Search (DS) simplified inter-prediction. The SED anticipates the blocks that are likely to be better predicted by the HEVC intra-prediction, avoiding evaluations of Depth Modeling Modes (DMM). The DS and SED were compared to anchor results and experimental analysis showed that the proposed algorithms are able to achieve a time saving of 11.3% encoding time reduction, with acceptable impact on the BD-Rate of the synthesized views of 0.6%.