Generic techniques to reduce SVC enhancement layer encoding complexity

Scalable video coding is an important mechanism to provide several types of end-user devices with different versions of the same encoded bitstream. However, scalable video encoding remains a computationally expensive operation. To decrease the complexity we propose generic techniques. These techniques are generic in a sense that they can be combined with existing fast mode decision methods and optimizations. We show that extending such an existing fast mode decision technique yields an average complexity reduction of 87.27%, while only an additional 0.74% of bit rate increase and a decrease of 0.11dB in PSNR is required, compared to the original fast mode decision method.