Frame-based skip mode decision for distributed video coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a coding paradig- m that can shift the computational expensive task from the encoder to the decoder. Though in theory this reverse of encoder and decoder complexity does not cause coding performance degradation compared with traditional hybrid video codecs, the gap between the two codecs is still quite high. One reason for the performance gap is the lack of rich coding modes for current DVC codecs. This paper proposes a frame-based skip mode decision algorithm. An effective encoder-side SI quality estimation technique is introduced to facilitate an accurate skip mode decision. With the proposed technique, the encoding and decoding time are reduced by about 9% and 50% respectively and the rate-distortion (R-D) performance is improved by an average of 0.49 dB compared with the well-known DISCOVER DVC codec. Index Terms—Distributed video coding ; frame-based; Skip mode ; SI quality estimation