Fast inter-frame prediction in multi-view video coding based on perceptual distortion threshold model

Abstract

Multi-view video coding (MVC) utilizes hierarchical B picture prediction structure and adopts many coding techniques to remove spatiotemporal and inter-view redundancies at the cost of high computational complexity. In this paper, a novel perceptual distortion threshold model (PDTM) is proposed to reveal the relationship between the mode selection of inter-frame prediction and coding distortion threshold. Based on the proposed PDTM, a new fast inter-frame prediction algorithm in MVC is developed aimed at minimizing computational complexity for dependent view coding. Then the fast MVC algorithm is incorporated into the multi-view High Efficiency Video Coding (MV-HEVC) software to improve MVC coding efficiency. In practical coding, the mode selection for inter-frame prediction of dependent views may be early terminated based on the thresholds derived from the PDTM, thereby reducing the coding time complexity. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the computational complexity of the dependent views by 52.9% compared with the HTM14.1 algorithm under the coding structure of hierarchical B pictures. Moreover, the bitrate is increased by 0.9% under the same subjective quality and only increased by 1.0% under the same objective quality peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Compared with the state-of-the-art fast algorithm, the proposed algorithm can save more coding time, while the bitrate under the same PSNR increases slightly.