VLSI Architecture Design of Fractional Motion Estimation for H.264/AVC

The H.264/AVC Fractional Motion Estimation (FME) with rate-distortion constrained mode decision can improve the rate-distortion efficiency by 2–6 dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio. However, it comes with considerable computation complexity. Acceleration by dedicated hardware is a must for real-time applications. The main difficulty for FME hardware implementation is parallel processing under the constraint of the sequential flow and data dependency. We analyze seven inter-correlative loops extracted from FME procedure and provide decomposing methodologies to obtain efficient projection in hardware implementation. Two techniques, 4×4 block decomposition and efficiently vertical scheduling, are proposed to reuse data among the variable block size and to improve the hardware utilization. Besides, advanced architectures are designed to efficiently integrate the 6-taps 2D finite impulse response, residue generation, and 4×4 Hadamard transform into a fully pipelined architecture. This design is finally implemented and integrated into an H.264/AVC single chip encoder that supports realtime encoding of 720×480 30fps video with four reference frames at 81 MHz operation frequency with 405 K logic gates (41.9% area of the encoder).

Small-diamond-based search algorithm for fast block motion estimation

A good fast motion search algorithm should efficiently speed up the encoding time and keep the quality of encoded video stable at the same time. Researches have shown that many fast algorithms lose the quality requirement in some special video sequences. These video sequences often have heavy motions and need large search windows for motion vector search. E3SS, DS, and E-HEXBS, which are famous algorithms, are not good enough in these sequences. As to UMHexagonS, it is able to meet the high video quality requirement very well, but it costs too much computation. This paper introduces a multi-stage motion estimation algorithm. The algorithm ensures getting good video quality while decreases the motion search time efficiently. It divides the search regions into many un-overlapped small-diamond regions and forces the motion search to go outward for larger motion vectors. This method is also designed to avoid mistaking local optimal motion vectors. For this reason, the selected motion vector is refined by several stages. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm uses almost the same number of checking points as E3SS but achieves a better quality. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is also tested in H.264/AVC JM9.5 encoder; the experimental results show that this algorithm is also suitable for variable block-size motion estimation.     

Probability Constrained Search Range Determination for Fast Motion Estimation

In this paper, we propose new adaptive search range motion estimation methods where the search ranges are constrained by the probabilities of motion vector differences and a search point sampling technique is applied to the constrained search ranges. Our new methods are based on our previous work, in which the search ranges were analytically determined by the probabilities. Since the proposed adaptive search range motion estimation methods effectively restrict the search ranges instead of search point sampling patterns, they provide a very flexible and hardware‐friendly approach in motion estimation. The proposed methods were evaluated and tested with JM16.2 of the H.264/AVC video coding standard. Experiment results exhibit that with negligible degradation in PSNR, the proposed methods considerably reduce the computational complexity in comparison with the conventional methods. In particular, the combined method provides performance similar to that of the hybrid unsymmetrical‐cross multi‐hexagon‐grid search method and outstanding merits in hardware implementation.     

Mode dependent down-sampling and interpolation scheme for high efficiency video coding

In this paper, a mode dependent down-sampling and interpolation scheme is proposed to improve the coding efficiency of the intra prediction module. In the proposed method, we elaborately design the down-sampling structures and interpolation schemes for each directional intra prediction mode by minimizing the spatial prediction distance. The sampled pixels are predicted with a traditional directional intra prediction scheme, and the non-sampled pixels are predicted from the interpolation of their neighboring reconstructed sampling pixels. Both the residuals of the sampled and non-sampled pixels are encoded at last. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves an average 7.52% bitrate reduction relative to KTA reference software. Since the down-sampling structure and interpolation method is only related to the intra mode, there is no additional overhead at the encoder.     

Transparent encryption techniques for H.264/AVC and H.264/SVC compressed video

Transparent encryption of video content requires to provide a video preview that is left in plaintext, while the enhancement information is encrypted. In this paper we propose three algorithms that provide transparent encryption. The first two ones are based on the idea of generating controlled drift in such a way as to obtain the desired quality level, while the third algorithm employs scalable video coding. We provide experimental results on several video sequences, as well as a security analysis, showing that the proposed algorithms provide an effective framework to perform transparent encryption.     

Adaptive Scanning for H.264/AVC Intra Coding

In this letter, an adaptive scanning that improves intra coding efficiency in the H.264/AVC standard is proposed. The proposed adaptive scanning utilizes the prediction directions (modes) that include the horizontal and vertical edge information in a block. Depending on the prediction directions, the proposed method uses three scanning methods: zigzag scanning, horizontal scanning, and vertical scanning. In the proposed method, horizontal and vertical scanning are used in vertical and horizontal prediction modes, respectively, and the normal zigzag scanning in the H.264 standard is used in all other intra prediction modes. The proposed method reduces the bit rate by approximately 2.5% compared with H.264/AVC, without the degradation of video quality.     

A Multi-core Architecture Based Parallel Framework for H.264/AVC Deblocking Filters

Deblocking filter is one of the most time consuming modules in the H.264/AVC decoder as indicated in many studies. Therefore, accelerating deblocking filter is critical for improving the overall decoding performance. This paper proposes a novel parallel algorithm for H.264/AVC deblocking filter to speed the H.264/AVC decoder up. We exploit pixel-level data parallelism among filtering steps, and observe that results of each filtering step only affect a limited region of pixels. We call this “the limited propagation effect”. Based on this observation, the proposed algorithm could partition a frame into multiple independent rectangles with arbitrary granularity. The proposed parallel deblocking filter algorithm requires very little synchronization overhead, and provides good scalability. Experimental results show that applying the proposed parallelization method to a SIMD optimized sequential deblocking filter achieves up to 95.31% and 224.07% speedup on a two-core and four-core processor, respectively. We have also observed a significant speedup for H.264/AVC decoding, 21% and 34% on a two-core and four-core processor, respectively.

H.264/AVC中基于全零块检测的运动估计快速算法

全零块检测是面向低比特率的视频编码器常用优化方法之一.特别是与运动估计相结合,可以有效的减少编码器的计算复杂性.本文根据H.264/AVC中整数变换的特点,给出了相应的全零块检测门限,提出了一种基于全零块检测的运动搜索提前中止准则.针对H.264/AVC多编码模式的特点,进一步将全零块检测用于H.264/AVC中多种编码模式的选择,有效的提高了运动估计的效率.利用这种方法,在有效减少编码器的计算复杂性,提高H.264/AVC软件编码器编码效率的同时,可以保持比特率和图像质量基本不变.     

一种H.264/AVC反变换反量化IP核设计

提出了一种适用于H.264/AVC解码器功能完整的反变换反量化IP核的设计.设计中采用同一处理单元完成三种不同的反变换,反变换反量化的每个步骤采用独立的门控时钟控制,逻辑复用和门控时钟降低了功耗.实现结果表明本设计满足1080i高清码流的实时解码要求.     

H.264/AVC高保真扩展的概述

联合视频组JVT最近刚刚完成对H.264/AVC标准的一系列功能扩展,这些扩展提供了许多更强大的功能,被统一命名为高保真扩展(FRExt).对高保真扩展进行了概述,并重点说明了高保真扩展的几个主要特征和功能.     

H.264/AVC中分像素插值模块的可重构设计

针对H.264/AVC中分像素插值算法,提出并实现了4×4基本块的分像素插值模块的可重构流水线结构,具有可并行处理数据和连续插值等优点,同时利用该结构设计了其他块模式.在UMC 0.18 μm工艺下,最大频率140 MHz时,综合逻辑门数为32×103门,能够满足HDTV视频图像实时处理的要求.     

无线环境中H.264/AVC结构的改进

研究无线环境的视频传输是3G发展的关键.无线视频压缩编码不仅要求高压缩性能还要求适应无线网络的特征,这使得H.264/AVC成为目前惟一可选的编解码标准.文章介绍了H.264/AVC中适合用于无线视频传输的错误掩盖和抗误码的方法,讨论了基于无线网络如何应用这些方法,展望了无线环境中H.264/AVC需要的进一步改进.     

一种快速去块滤波器结构

为了消除由于图象的预测,补偿,变换,量化引起得块效应,H.264/AVC标准中引入了去块滤波器.本文通过采用并行滤波,介绍了一种编解码环中快速实现去块滤波的滤波器结构,分析了该结构的滤波原理以及滤波过程中数据的存储.     

新一代视频编码标准H．264／AVC的关键技术研究

H.264/AVC是继H.263之后的新一代视频编码新标准,它采用了大量的新技术,适合各种媒体的传输和存储,可以面向交互式和非交互式应用.这里主要介绍了它的关键技术,通过仿真实验研究了H.264/AVC的优越性.实验结果表明,H.264/AVC在改善编码性能和提高编码效率以及传输鲁棒性方面与现有的任何标准相比,在同样保真度的条件下,可节省码率50%以上.     

基于空域特征的H.264快速多参考帧选择算法

提出了一种H.264快速多参考帧选择算法,它利用视频序列的空间相关特性,在运动估计之前判断当前宏块的Skip编码模式,实现在运动估计过程中快速选择编码模式,基于对Skip编码模式占用概率的统计分析,设置多模式下参考帧数量.实验结果表明,本算法在PSNR损耗与全搜索算法相比不超过0.07dB的情况下,平均节约72.5%的编码时间.     

H．264/AVC解码器中去块效应滤波系统

本文介绍了H．264/AVC编解码器中块效应产生的原因及去块效应滤波的算法原理,提出了基于FPGA平台实现的H．264/AVC解码器中的去块效应滤波系统的硬件设计方法,并通过了仿真验证。