Encoding mode selection in HEVC with the use of noise reduction

This paper concerns optimization of encoding in HEVC. A novel method is proposed in which encoding modes, e.g. coding block structure, prediction types and motion vectors, are selected basing on noise-reduced version of the input sequence, while the content, e.g. transform coefficients, are coded basing on the unaltered input sequence. Although the proposed scheme involves encoding of two versions of the input sequence, the proposed realization ensures that the complexity is only negligibly larger than complexity of a single encoder. The proposal has been implemented and assessed. The experimental results show that the proposal provides up to 1.5% bitrate reduction while preserving the same video quality.