A fast intra depth map algorithm based on sum-of-gradient and segment-wise direct component coding

As the coding standard for multi-view video plus depth format, 3D-High Efficiency Video Coding (3D-HEVC) can achieve superior coding efficiency while with high complexity. Because of the large areas with nearly constant values and sharp edges, the coding process for depth map can be optimized. A fast intra depth map algorithm based on sum-of-gradient and segment-wise direct component coding (FID-SOG-SDC) for 3D-HEVC is proposed in this paper. The sum of gradient information of each coding unit (CU) can be utilized to predict the intra prediction mode, decide CTU partition size and skip the SDC decision when CU belongs to a smooth region. Experimental results show that the proposed FID-SOG-SDC algorithm can achieve encoding time reduction by 23.07% with an impact of 0.06% in the rate-distortion(RD) performance compared to the original 3D-HEVC.