Gradient-based PU size selection for HEVC intra prediction

This paper proposes a fast hardware friendly intra block size selection algorithm with simple gradient calculations and the bottom-up structure to solve the high computational demand of intra prediction in the latest HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can save 57.3% encoding time in average for all-intra main case compared to the default encoding scheme in HM-9.0rc1, with slightly 2.2% BD-rate increases.