A multi-level dynamic complexity reduction scheme for multiview video coding

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for dynamically reducing the computational complexity of MVC. Our scheme exploits the coding mode correlation available in the 3D-neighborhood (i.e., spatial, temporal, and view) along with the rate-distortion proper- ties of the neighboring Macroblocks. Our scheme incorporates a multi-level mode decision process based on a mode-ranking mechanism that categorizes more-probable and less-probable coding modes. In order to react to the changing bitrates, our scheme deploys Quantization Parameter based threshold equations which are formulated using an offline statistical analysis. Compared to the exhaustive Rate-Distortion-Optimized Mode Decision (RDO-MD), our scheme achieves a complexity reduction of up to 80% (68% on average) with an average PSNR loss of 0.075 dB. Compared to state-of-the-art fast RDO-MD, our scheme achieves a complexity reduction of up to 34% with an average PSNR gain of 0.007 dB.