Fast intra mode decision for HEVC based on Transparent Composite Model

Compared with H.264/AVC, the newest video standard called High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) further improves video coding performance, but at the price of significant increase in its encoding complexity, especially in intra mode decision due to the adoption of complex block partition scheme and more intra prediction modes. To reduce the intra mode decision complexity in HEVC while maintaining its coding efficiency, in this paper, we first formulate the mode decision as a Bayesian decision problem based on the newly proposed Transparent Composite Model (TCM) and then present an outlier based fast intra mode decision method. Experiments show that for the All-Intra Main test configuration of HEVC, our method reduces, on average, the encoding time by 48% with an insignificant loss in coding efficiency (0.7% BD-Rate increase).