Rectangular partitioning for Intra prediction in HEVC

This paper presents a mechanism of using rectangular prediction blocks for Intra prediction in the emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. In the previous and current video coding standards, Intra predictions have been processed on square blocks, e.g. 16×16, 8×8 and 4×4 pixel blocks H.264/MPEG4 AVC, and 2N×2N or N×N square prediction units (PU) in the current HEVC. In this paper, it is proposed to include 2N×N and N×2N prediction block sizes (or PU types) in a 2N×2N coding unit (CU) for the Intra prediction, as in the Inter prediction. Experimental results show that, together with other tools (e.g. NSQT) significant coding gain, i.e. average 1.8% BD-rate reduction with the use of 2-point prediction and transforms, or 1.4% BD-rate reduction without the use of 2-point prediction and transforms (for “All Intra” configuration) can be achieved, compared with HM5.0 anchor.