Fast mode selection algorithm based on texture analysis for 3D-HEVC intra prediction

The increasing availability of 3D video systems and applications has attracted more consumers for 3D viewing experiences and, consequently, the demand for storage and transmission of 3D video content is growing. An interesting alternative for this need is the transmission of 3D video based on the Multiview Video plus Depth (MVD) format. The upcoming 3D High Efficiency Video Coding (3D-HEVC) standard will adopt this format, which associates a depth map to each texture frame. This paper presents a fast mode decision algorithm, which analyses the texture frames and depth maps to detect the edge orientation of the prediction units (PUs), optimizing the intra prediction process and reducing the 3D-HEVC computational complexity. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an average processing time reduction of 26.2%, with a small degradation in encoding efficiency (BD-rate increase of 0.3% on average).