Rate-complexity-distortion evaluation for hybrid video coding

To objectively evaluate the coding efficiency of video codecs, Bjøntegaard Delta PSNR (BD-PSNR) was proposed. Based on the rate-distortion (R-D) curve fitting, BD-PSNR is able to provide a good evaluation of the R-D performance. However, BD-PSNR has a critical drawback: It doesn´t take the coding complexity into account. Clearly for practical video applications, especially for those on handheld devices, coding complexity has to be considered when evaluating the overall coding performance. Therefore in this paper, a new coding efficiency measurement is developed by generalizing BD-PSNR from R-D curve fitting to rate-complexity-distortion (R-C-D) surface fitting. Simulations show that a comprehensive performance evaluation can easily be obtained with the proposed method. Moreover, the idea can be used for rate-distortion optimization for complexity-constrained video coding.