An Efficient Mode Decision Algorithm for Combined Scalable Video Coding

• Published in: Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems pp. 58 - 68
• Main Authors: Kim, Tae-Jung, Seo, Bo-Seok, Suh, Jae-Won
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2010
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Combined scalability; Fast mode decision; H.264/AVC SE; Scalable video coding
• ISBN: 3642176909; 9783642176906
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-17691-3_6

Scalable video coding (SVC) is an extension of H.264/AVC that is used to provide a video standard for scalability. Scalability refers to the capability of recovering physically meaningful image or video information by decoding only partial compressed bitstreams. Scalable coding is typically accomplished by providing multiple layers of a video, in terms of quality resolution, spatial resolution, temporal resolution, or combinations of these options. To increase the coding efficiency, SVC adapts the inter layer prediction which uses the information of base layer to encode the enhancement layers. Due to the inter layer prediction, the computational complexity of SVC is much more complicated than that of H.264/AVC, such as mode decision based on rate-distortion optimization (RDO) and hierarchical bi-directional motion estimation. In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision algorithm for combined scalability to reduce the complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves up to a 48% decrease in the encoding time with a negligible loss of visual quality and increment of bit rates.