JND-based multi-module cooperative perceptual optimization for HEVC

Since the just noticeable distortion (JND) reflects the tolerance limit of human visual system (HVS) to distortion directly, JND-based perceptual video coding (PVC) plays an increasingly significant role in compression with the developing explosion of video data. In this paper, we focus on the coupling effect coding modules and provide a JND-based multi-module cooperative perceptual optimization (JMCPO) scheme for HEVC. The main contribution of the proposed JMCPO scheme includes the following three aspects. Based on quantization distortion estimation, an adaptive perceptual quantization scheme is proposed using binary search approach on the premise of that the quantization distortion is infinitely close to the estimated JND threshold. (2) The coupling effect among coding modules is first analyzed and a novel perceptual residual filtering scheme is presented based on statistic analysis of coupling strength. (3) The JMCPO scheme finally developed through collaborative optimization of residual filtering, quantization and rate-distortion optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed JMCPO scheme saves more bitrate with subjective and objective qualities.