A Probability-Based Zero-Block Early Termination Algorithm for QSHVC

To seamlessly adapt to time-varying network bandwidths, the Quality Scalable High-Efficiency Video Coding (QSHVC) is developed. However, its coding process is overly complex, and this seriously limits its wide applications in real-time environments. Therefore, it is of great significance to study fast coding algorithms for QSHVC. In this paper, we propose a novel probability-based zero-block early termination algorithm for QSHVC. First, we observed that the generated residual coefficients follow the Laplace distribution if a CU is accurately predicted. According to this observation, we derive the sum of squared differences based All-Zero Block (AZB) decision condition. Second, we develop the Hadamard Transform (HT)-based zero-valued quantized coefficient decision condition to obtain zero-valued quantized coefficients and the corresponding Partial-Zero Block (PZB). Third, the probability of each coding mode and coding depth being chosen as the best ones are combined with both AZBs and PZBs to derive the probability-based early termination condition. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the average coding speed by 79.85% with a 0.34% decrease in BDBR.