A Novel Gaming Video Encoding Process Using In-Game Motion Vectors

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a motion preprocessing method for the use in the game application pipeline, which is composed of two stages: the proposed preprocessing method and the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoder. The method accepts the object information from the game application, preprocesses the motion vectors of objects, and pass the preprocessed motion data to the HEVC encoder. The HEVC encoder takes the motion data as the initial (or the dedicated) value of motion estimation. Therefore, the traditional diamond search can be skipped and hence increase the encoding performance of the HEVC encoder. In the motion preprocessing method, the following three steps are taken: a coordination system transformation, determining motion vectors for $4\times 4$ -checkerboard blocks [Atomic Block (AB)], and the selection of proper motion vectors for all varieties of prediction units in the encoder. With a focus on the special issues, such as move-out zone and bi-directional prediction, we are able to further optimize the performance of the encoder. We examined two types of 2D gaming scenes in our experiments. The experimental results show that, as compared with the original diamond search method provided by the encoder, our algorithm is able to achieve up to 49.0% time reduction of video encoding. The Bjontegaard Delta bit rate can achieve up to −17.0% in the random_access mode while combining with the $\times 265$ encoder and up to −26.2% in the lowdelay mode while combining with the HM-16 encoder.