Multiple Quantization Parameter Optimization in Versatile Video Coding for 360° Videos

Consumer Electronics (CE) devices have started to support 360° videos in order to improve the perceived video quality by consumers. Higher compression in 360° videos not only lead to improved consumer perception, but also efficient energy and storage usage in CE devices. Consequently, efficient compression of such video content is becoming a critical design consideration of CE devices. To this end, this paper first proposes a residual weighting algorithm that utilizes the features of Weighted Craster Parabolic Projection Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (WCPPPSNR), to instigate the first stage of magnitude reduction of the residuals. The model parameters associated with the residual weighting algorithm are determined in the initial experimental stage. Next, the paper proposes a Quantization Parameter (QP) optimization technique which introduces the second stage of magnitude reduction for residuals with minimal impact on the overall video quality. The proposed method is tested on the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) test model with All-Intra configuration. In this context, the empirical results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the coding efficiency by 3.34% on average and outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques.