Just Noticeable Difference Based Fast Coding Unit Partition in HEVC Intra Coding

Meng Zhang, Huihui Bai, Meiqin Liu, Anhong Wang, Mengmeng Zhang, Yao Zhao

Abstract: As an ongoing video compression standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) has achieved better rate distortion performance than H.264, but it also leads to enormous encoding complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel fast coding unit partition algorithm in the intra prediction of HEVC. Firstly, instead of the time-consuming rate distortion optimization for coding mode decision, just-noticeable-difference (JND) values can be exploited to partition the coding unit according to human visual system characteristics. Furthermore, coding bits in HEVC can also be considered as assisted information to refine the partition results. Compared with HEVC test model HM10.1, the experimental results show that the fast intra mode decision algorithm provides over 28% encoding time saving on average with comparable rate distortion performance.