A fast mode decision algorithm for HEVC intra prediction
The latest video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) can achieve up to 50% bit rate saving while maintain the same subjective quality compared to H.264/AVC. However, this great advance is obtained at the expense of significantly increased encoder complexity. In this paper, a two-step algorithm focusing on fast mode decision is proposed for HEVC intra prediction. Firstly, depth information of CU block is utilized to skip some unlikely selected modes, with the assumption that a brute-force search for a large CU is unnecessary. Secondly, the order of Most Probable Modes (MPM) and Rough Mode Decision (RMD) is adjusted, thus the amount of mode need be evaluated is further reduced. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve about 31% encoder time saving on average while result in negligible BD-rate loss under the All Intra configuration compared with HM 16.0.