Segmental Prediction for Video Coding

Abstract

The emerging standards for screen content coding (SCC) and 3D video coding known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)-SCC and 3D-HEVC, respectively, have been developed as extensions of HEVC. Compared with camera-captured video, screen content video and depth maps usually contain significantly fewer colors or sample intensities and much sharper edges in a frame. In this paper, a new coding method named segmental prediction is proposed to code screen content and depth maps more efficiently. First, samples in a prediction block are classified into several segments according to the sample intensities. Second, a particular predictor is calculated for each segment. Then an offset for a segment is derived at the encoder side and signaled to the decoder side. Finally, a single sample value is assigned to each segment in the reconstructed block. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve a 2.2% average Bjontegaard Distortion-rate (BD-rate) saving under the HEVC-SCC common test conditions (CTCs) for sequences of the category YUV, text and graphics with motion, 1080p, with the all intra configuration. It can also achieve a 0.6% average BD-rate saving for synthesized views under the 3D-HEVC CTCs with the random access configuration.