Difference detection based early mode termination for depth map coding in MVC

Depth map coding is a new topic in multiview video coding (MVC) following the development of depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). Since depth map is monochromatic and has less texture than color map, fast algorithm is necessary and possible to reduce the computation burden of the encoder. This paper proposed difference detection based early mode termination strategy. The difference detection (DD) algorithms are categorized to reconstructed frame based (RDD) and original frame based (ODD). A simplified ODD (sODD) strategy is also proposed. Early mode termination based on these three DD algorithms are implemented and evaluated in the reference software of Joint Multiview Video Coding (JMVC) version 8.0 respectively. Simulation results indicate that RDD based one has no performance lost and reduce 25% runtime on average. ODD and sODD based ones can save 54.3% and 43.6% runtime respectively and have an acceptable R-D performance lost.