An efficient coding scheme for surveillance videos based on high efficiency video coding

As the latest coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) has an obvious advantage in coding efficiency. Compared to H.264 Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC), HEVC can achieve about 50% bitrate reduction at the same subjective video quality. However, the enhancement in compression efficiency has been achieved at the cost of large increase in computational complexity. In this paper, to reduce the computational complexity, we propose a new coding scheme for surveillance videos using inter-frame difference to encode different image areas with different encoder options. The scheme is implemented through the proposed fast Coding Unit (CU) size decision algorithm. With using the luma component of difference image, the proposed algorithm can segment out moving objects from background, and then select proper CU size for different areas. Experimental results show that the encoding complexity can be reduced by an average of 45% with small increment in bitrate and negligible loss in Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) compared to the High efficiency video coding test Model (HM) 9.2 reference software. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is not only applied to surveillance videos recorded by static cameras, but also applied to regular videos with excellent coding performance.