Browsing by Author "Agostini, Luciano"
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- Classification-based early termination for coding tree structure decision in HEVCPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Cruz, Luis A. da Silva; Agostini, LucianoThe High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard provides improved compression rates in comparison to its predecessors at the cost of large increases in computational complexity. An important share of such increases is due to the introduction of flexible Coding Tree structures, which best configuration is decided through exhaustive tests in a Rate-Distortion Optimization (RDO) scheme. In this work, an early termination method for the decision of such structures was designed using classification trees obtained through Data Mining techniques. The classification trees were trained using intermediate encoding results from a training set of video sequences and implemented in the encoder to skip the full RDO-based decision. An average reduction of 37% in the HEVC encoder computational complexity was achieved when using the designed classification trees, with a negligible cost of only 0.28% in terms of Bjontegaard Delta-rate increase.
- Complexity-Aware High Efficiency Video CodingPublication . Corrêa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThis book discusses computational complexity of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoders with coverage extending from the analysis of HEVC compression efficiency and computational complexity to the reduction and scaling of its encoding complexity. After an introduction to the topic and a review of the state-of-the-art research in the field, the authors provide a detailed analysis of the HEVC encoding tools compression efficiency and computational complexity. Readers will benefit from a set of algorithms for scaling the computational complexity of HEVC encoders, all of which take advantage from the flexibility of the frame partitioning structures allowed by the standard. The authors also provide a set of early termination methods based on data mining and machine learning techniques, which are able to reduce the computational complexity required to find the best frame partitioning structures. The applicability of the proposed methods is finally exemplified with an encoding time control system that employs the best complexity reduction and scaling methods presented throughout the book. The methods presented in this book are especially useful in power-constrained, portable multimedia devices to reduce energy consumption and to extend battery life. They can also be applied to portable and non-portable multimedia devices operating in real time with limited computational resources.
- Computational Resource Management for Video Coding in Mobile EnvironmentsPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThe increase of computational resources in mobile devices and the availability of reliable communication infrastructures provide support for acquisition, display, coding/decoding and transmission of high-resolution video in a broad set of equipment such as tablets and smartphones. Nevertheless, real-time video encoding and decoding is still a challenge in such computing environments, especially when considering the amount of computational resources required by state-of-the-art video coding standards. Moreover, battery technologies did not evolve as much as desired, which makes power consumption minimization an important issue for the mobile devices industry and users. Therefore, in current mobile systems, the available computational resources along with battery-life are responsible for imposing significant limitations on mobile real-time multimedia communications. This chapter presents an overview of the state-of-the-art research on management of computational resources for video encoding systems in mobile communications equipment. A review on computational complexity analysis of both H.264/AVC and HEVC video coding standards is presented, followed by a description of current methods for modelling, reducing and controlling the expenditure of computational resources on these video codecs. Finally, future trends on computational complexity management for video codecs implemented on power-constrained devices are lined out.
- Dynamic tree-depth adjustment for low power HEVC encodersPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Cruz, Luis A. da Silva; Agostini, LucianoPower consumption is a major problem in multimedia-capable mobile devices, especially those equipped with the most advanced video codecs. The emerging HEVC standard introduces a set of features which significantly increase the encoder computational complexity and consequently the power consumption in comparison to its predecessor, H.264/AVC. This paper presents two complexity reduction methods that selectively constrain the coding tree depth to keep computational complexity below a pre-established limit. Experimental results show that the encoder complexity can be reduced to 60% of the original complexity, allowing the implementation of low power HEVC encoders with small or negligible loss in rate-distortion performance.
- Encoding time control system for HEVC based on Rate-Distortion-Complexity analysisPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Cruz, Luis A. da Silva; Agostini, LucianoThe improved compression efficiency of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) comes with large increases in computational complexity, which has been lately dealt by researchers with complexity reduction and scaling methods. However, encoding time control at frame or Group of Pictures (GOP) level is still an open issue that must be investigated. In this work, a Rate-Distortion-Complexity analysis is performed upon a set of configurations that have been created based on findings and techniques of previous works. The proposed control system uses the best 27 configurations to adjust the encoding time per GOP and yields encoding time reductions of up to 84.5% with an average difference between target and encoding times of 4.1%. © 2015 IEEE.
- Fast coding tree structure decision for HEVC based on classification treesPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThe High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard provides improved compression rates in comparison to its predecessors at the cost of large increases in computational complexity. An important share of such increases is due to the introduction of flexible Coding Tree structures, which best configuration is decided through exhaustive tests in a rate-distortion optimization (RDO) scheme. In this work, an early termination method for the decision of such structures was designed using classification trees obtained through Data Mining techniques. The classification trees were trained using intermediate encoding results from a set of video sequences and implemented in the encoder to avoid the full RDO-based decision. An average reduction of 37 % in the HEVC encoder computational complexity was achieved when using the designed classification trees, with a negligible cost of only 0.28 % in terms of Bjontegaard Delta-rate increase.
- Four-step algorithm for early termination in HEVC inter-frame prediction based on decision treesPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThe flexible encoding structures of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) are the main responsible for the improvements of the standard in terms of compression efficiency in comparison to its predecessors. However, the flexibility provided by these structures is accompanied by high levels of computational complexity, since more options are considered in a Rate-Distortion (R-D) optimization scheme. In this paper, we propose a four-step early-termination method, which decides whether the inter mode decision should be halted without testing all possibilities. The method employs a set of decision trees, which are trained offline once, using information from unconstrained HEVC encoding runs. The resulting trees present a mode decision accuracy ranging from 97.6% to 99.4% with a negligible computational overhead. The method is capable of achieving an average computational complexity decrease of 49% at the cost of a very small Bjontegaard Delta (BD)-rate increase (0.58%).
- Motion compensated tree depth limitation for complexity control of HEVC encodingPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThe recently introduced quadtree coding structures used in HEVC increase compression efficiency in comparison to previous standards at the cost of higher computational complexity levels. This paper proposes an evolution of a complexity control method for HEVC encoders based on the dynamic adjustment of these structures' maximum depth. The new method improves the previous solution by adopting a new control strategy and compensating the motion effect on a maximum tree depth map which is central to the complexity control strategy. The proposed method is capable of performing a more accurate complexity control than our previous strategy while still reducing compression efficiency losses in terms of image quality and bit rate.
- Performance and Computational Complexity Assessment of High-Efficiency Video EncodersPublication . Correa, Guilherme; Assunção, Pedro; Agostini, Luciano; Cruz, Luis A. da SilvaThis paper presents a performance evaluation study of coding efficiency versus computational complexity for the forthcoming High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. A thorough experimental investigation was carried out to identify the tools that most affect the encoding efficiency and computational complexity of the HEVC encoder. A set of 16 different encoding configurations was created to investigate the impact of each tool, varying the encoding parameter set and comparing the results with a baseline encoder. This paper shows that, even though the computational complexity increases monotonically from the baseline to the most complex configuration, the encoding efficiency saturates at some point. Moreover, the results of this paper provide relevant information for implementation of complexity-constrained encoders by taking into account the tradeoff between complexity and coding efficiency. It is shown that low-complexity encoding configurations, defined by careful selection of coding tools, achieve coding efficiency comparable to that of high-complexity configurations.