Run-Time Machine Learning for HEVC/H.265 Fast Partitioning Decision

Abstract

A novel fast Coding Tree Unit partitioning for HEVC/H.265 encoder is proposed in this paper. This method relies on run-time trained neural networks for fast Coding Units splitting decisions. Contrasting to state-of-the-art solutions, this method does not require any pre-training and provides a high adaptivity to the dynamic changes in video contents. By an efficient sampling strategy and a multi-thread implementation, the presented technique successfully mitigates the computational overhead inherent to the training process on both the overall processing performance and on the initial encoding delay. The experiments show that the proposed method successfully reduces the HEVC/H.265 encoding time for up to 65% with negligible rate-distortion penalties.