An Enhanced Lenient Merging Scheme for H.264 Variable Block Size Selection

The H.264 video coding standard supports the usage of Variable Block Size (VBS) Motion Estimation/ Compensation and Mode Decision (ME/MD). This tool clearly enhances the rate-distortion (R-D) capabilities of the encoder. However, it dramatically increases its computational requirements. This paper represents an extension to a recently proposed scheme for efficient block size mode selection. The proposed scheme enhances the R-D performance of at the expense of minor computational overhead. A dynamic version of the proposed scheme that requires reconfiguration of the encoder according to the target bitrate is also introduced. The dynamic solution exhibits better RD-performance than the static counterparts throughout the wide range of target bitrates.