Context-Based Ternary Tree Decision Method in Versatile Video Coding for Fast Intra Coding

This paper presents a fast encoding method for versatile video coding (VVC) using an early determination scheme that skips redundant multi-type tree (MTT) pruning. MTT consists of binary and ternary trees (TTs) with traditional quadtrees and has recently attracted considerable VVC research interest due to coding efficiency beyond HEVC. However, the additional trees, particularly TTs, significantly increased VVC complexity, which has rarely been studied previously. Therefore, we identified TT characteristics in the VVC encoding context, and hence propose a simple early decision technique that can effectively reduce TT complexity. Experiments over various test sequences show that the proposed method substantially decreased the total encoding time for a VVC test model 4.0 (VTM 4.0) with only slight coding loss under the all-intra configuration. In particular, the proposed method reduced TT encoding time by up to 66% compared with VTM 4.0.