Computational Complexity Optimization in H.264 Video Coding

H.264 is well known for the best compression performance with high computational complexity. In order to be more viable in computationally constraint environments, it needs a performance optimization scheme, proposed in the paper based on trade-off between the computational complexity and distortion. Computationally intensive modules are empirically identified and analyzed in terms of computational complexity and distortion in the H.264 video coding framework. Operating modes are extracted in the complexity-distortion space through an exhaustive search. It is shown that the proposed optimization scheme can reduce the coding computing complexity while the degradation of visual quality is almost negligible.