Efficient Coding Unit and Prediction Unit Decision Algorithm for Multiview Video Coding

To aim at higher coding efficiency for multiview video coding, the multiview video with a modified high efficiency video coding(MV-HEVC)codec is proposed to encode the dependent views.However, the computational complexity of MV-HEVC encoder is also increased significantly since MV-HEVC inherits all computational complexity of HEVC. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for reducing the high computational complexity of MV-HEVC by fast deciding the coding unit during the encoding process. In our proposal, the depth information of the largest coding units(LCUs) from independent view and neighboring LCUs is analyzed first. Afterwards, the analyzed results are used to early determine the depth for dependent view and thus achieve computational complexity reduction. Furthermore, a prediction unit(PU) decision strategy is also proposed to maintain the video quality. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm can achieve 57% time saving on average,while maintaining good video quality and bit-rate performance compared with HTM8.0.