Adaptive PU Mode Estimation Algorithm for HEVC Encoder

In this paper, adaptive PU mode estimation algorithm is proposed to achieve a fast High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoding. According to HEVC standard, a picture is composed of a number of Coding Tree Units (CTU's). These CTUs are further divided in quadtree structure to form Coding Units (CUs), and CUs have one or more Prediction Units (PUs). The PU mode decision processing to find a best PU mode has the most computational complexity. To reduce the computational complexity, the proposed algorithm can skip checking of both symmetric and asymmetric PU partition sizes using best PU information (i.e., partition size and mode) of temporally co-located CUs. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm using HM 16.2 achieves an average 30% reduction in encoding time for random access configuration, with a Y BD-rate loss of 0.58%.