Fast mode decision for 3D-HEVC depth intracoding

The emerging international standard of high efficiency video coding based 3D video coding (3D-HEVC) is a successor to multiview video coding (MVC). In 3D-HEVC depth intracoding, depth modeling mode (DMM) and high efficiency video coding (HEVC) intraprediction mode are both employed to select the best coding mode for each coding unit (CU). This technique achieves the highest possible coding efficiency, but it results in extremely large encoding time which obstructs the 3D-HEVC from practical application. In this paper, a fast mode decision algorithm based on the correlation between texture video and depth map is proposed to reduce 3D-HEVC depth intracoding computational complexity. Since the texture video and its associated depth map represent the same scene, there is a high correlation among the prediction mode from texture video and depth map. Therefore, we can skip some specific depth intraprediction modes rarely used in related texture CU. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce computational complexity of 3D-HEVC depth intracoding while maintaining coding efficiency.