Complexity Analysis of MPEG-4 Visual

A complexity analysis of the video part of the emerging ISO/IEC MPEG-4 standard was performed as a basis for HW/SW-partitioning for VLSI implementation of a portable MPEG-4 terminal. While the computational complexity of previously standardized video coding schemes was predictable for I-, P- and B-frames over time, the support of arbitrarily-shaped visual objects as well as various coding options within MPEG-4 introduce now content- (and therefore time-) dependent computational requirements with significant variance. In this chapter the results of a time-dependent complexity analysis of the encoding and decoding process of a binary shape coded VO (video object) and the comparison with a rectangular shaped VO is given for the complete codec, as well as for the single tools of the encoding and decoding process. It is shown that the average MB complexity per arbitrarily-shaped P-VOP (video object plane) depicts significant variation over time for the encoder and minor variations for the decoder.