Depth maps are made up of sharp edges and near homogenous areas. To better represent object edges in depth videos, the three-dimensional (3D) extension of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard allows the use of additional Depth Modeling Modes (DMM) to the existing intra-prediction modes. One of these modes, Mode 3, performs distortion calculations on a set of pre-defined Wedgelet lists and signals the index of the Wedgelet that presents the least distortion. This paper proposes a fast and less complex Mode 3 depth-modeling scheme for the 3DHEVC encoder, where the set of Wedgelets is reduced to just six. This is achieved by acquiring four high-intensity changing points from the reference block. A 4.7% and 1.7% reduction in encoding runtime is achieved when testing this method with the hierarchical and all intra-prediction structures, respectively. In both cases, the resulting Peak-Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values are maintained.
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