Pooling-Based Intra Prediction Mode Coding for Mobile Video Applications

The demand of real-time yet high quality video encoding for portable multimedia devices is increasingly strong. The state of the art H.264/AVC standard provides much higher coding efficiency than its predecessors. However, its high computational complexity of encoding is not suitable for battery-powered mobile devices. In this paper, we introduce a low complexity video encoding scheme based on new pooled macroblock modes mainly targeted for battery-operated portable devices. Since the motion prediction and intra prediction take most of the computation and thus battery consumption, restriction of prediction block sizes is essential in implementing a low complexity encoder. However, if this is not done carefully, it may result in unacceptable degradation of coding efficiency. The problem is overcome by developing new macroblock coding modes which are computationally trivial but effective in coding efficiency. Experimental results with several well-known video test sequences verify a far better performance of the proposed method against the standard H.264/AVC encoder operated in low-complexity configuration. Also we evaluate how less power consumption the proposed low complexity encoder actually consumes compared to that of the H.264/AVC baseline profile.