Fast Spatial Layer Mode Decision based on Temporal Levels in H.264/AVC Scalable Extension

Abstract

Multimedia applications on various devices and heterogeneous networks become popular. However, it faces the problem that different requirements, such as bandwidth constraints, CPU processing capabilities, and display resolutions, need to be satisfied simultaneously. Scalable coding is one of the solutions that can provide temporal, spatial, quality, and rate scalabilities.

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is getting popular but exhibits a problem of high computational complexity compared with H.264/AVC single layer coding. A fast mode decision algorithm that reduces the candidate modes in motion estimation can certainly reduce its computation time. We propose an adaptive temporal level mode decision algorithm in spatial scalable video coding. In spatial scalability, we utilize the spatial candidate modes table constructed based on the statistics of real data to reduce the candidate modes. In temporal scalability, we apply the base layer mode information directly at low temporal levels. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce computation time up to 78.28% with less than 0.14 dB video quality degradation compared with JSVM 9.12.