Motion estimation optimization tools for the emerging high efficiency video coding (HEVC)

Recent development in hardware and software allowed a new generation of video quality. However, the development in networking and digital communication is lagging behind. This prompted the establishment of the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC), with an objective to develop a new high-performance video coding standard. A primary reason for developing the HEVC was to enable efficient processing and transmission for HD videos that normally contain large smooth areas; therefore, the HEVC utilizes larger encoding blocks than the previous standard to enable more effective encoding, while smaller blocks are still exploited to encode fast/complex areas of video more efficiently. Hence, the implementation of the encoder investigates all the possible block sizes. This and many added features on the new standard have led to significant increase in the complexity of the encoding process. Furthermore, there is not an automated process to decide on when large blocks or small blocks should be exploited. To overcome this problem, this research proposes a set of optimization tools to reduce the encoding complexity while maintaining the same quality and compression rate. The method automates this process through a set of hierarchical steps yet using the standard refined coding tools.