A complexity reduction scheme with adaptive search direction and mode elimination for multiview video coding

A novel complexity reduction scheme for Multiview Video Coding (MVC) is presented that adaptively eliminates the less-probable Motion or Disparity Estimation (ME, DE) search directions and less-probable block coding modes. Based on their texture difference w.r.t. the current Macroblock, matching neighbors in the 3D-neighborhood (spatial, temporal, view domains) are identified. Our scheme employs a multi-level decision process to predict the more-probable ME/DE search direction based on the texture and (motion/disparity) activity classification of the matching neighbors. For a predicted search direction, more-probable block coding modes are predicted depending upon the texture classification and RD-Cost of the current Macroblock. Quantization Parameter based thresholds are formulated using an offline statistical analysis of texture, motion/disparity, and RD-Cost properties. Our scheme achieves a complexity reduction of up to 81% and 40% compared to the exhaustive Rate-Distortion-Optimized Mode Decision and state-of-the-art, respectively, at the cost of an average BD-PSNR loss of 0.03 dB.