Early quadtree with nested multitype tree partitioning algorithm based on convolution neural network for the versatile video coding standard

The Joint Video Experts Team has recently finalized the versatile video coding (VVC) standard, which incorporates various advanced encoding tools. These tools ensure great enhancements in the coding efficiency, leading to a bitrate reduction up to 50% when compared to the previous standard, high-efficiency video coding. However, this enhancement comes at the expense of high computational complexity. Within this context, we address the new quadtree (QT) with nested multitype tree partition block in VVC for all-intra configuration. In fact, we propose a fast intra-coding unit (CU) partition algorithm using various convolution neural network (CNN) classifiers to directly predict the partition mode, skip unnecessary split modes, and early exit the partitioning process. The proposed approach first predicts the QT depth at a CU of size 64×64 by the corresponding CNN classifier. Then four CNN classifiers are applied to predict the partition decision tree at a CU of size 32×32 using multithreshold values and ignore the rate-distortion optimization process to speed up the partition coding time. Thus the developed method is implemented on the reference software VTM 16.2 and tested for different video sequences. The experimental results confirm that the proposed solution achieves an encoding time reduction of about 46% in average, reaching up to 67.3% with an acceptable increase in bitrate and an unsignificant decrease in quality.