Fast encoding of 3D color-plus-depth video based on 3D-HEVC

3D-HEVC is the newest standard for compressing the Multi-View plus Depth (MVD) video. Inheriting from HEVC, 3D-HEVC presents a high encoding complexity by extra considering interview prediction. Under the encoding architecture of 3D-HEVC, we develop fast algorithms for early decisions of CU splitting/non-splitting for both texture and depth frame coding. High correlation between the texture and depth domains is exploited such that when encoding one domain of information (texture or depth), the coding efficiency (RD characteristics or speedup) can be improved by adding suitably augmenting information from the other domain, thus achieving the so-called depth-assisted and texture-assisted coding. In texture coding part, optical flow features and depth edges are combined to form a feature vector for searching similar CUs in previously coded block buffers and inheriting the CU splitting decision accordingly. In depth coding part, optical flows and depth map features are used as inputs to a neural classifier for fast decision of CU splitting/non-splitting. Compared to the original 3D-HEVC implementation, our texture coding algorithm achieves a 46.6% of time saving at only 0.4% of bit rate increase and 0.04 dB of quality degradation. On the other side, our depth coding algorithm saves 35.8% of the encoding time at 2.65% of bit rate reduction and 0.16 dB of PSNR degradation. In comparison to prior works [4][5][10], our algorithm achieves more time saving at comparable bit rate increase and PSNR degradation.