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Fast motion estimation for HEVC on graphics processing unit (GPU)

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Abstract

The recent video compression standard, HEVC (high efficiency video coding), will most likely be used in various applications in the near future. However, the encoding process is far too slow for real-time applications. At the same time, computing capabilities of GPUs (graphics processing units) have become more powerful in these days. In this paper, we have proposed a GPU-based parallel motion estimation (ME) algorithm to enhance the performance of an HEVC encoder. A frame is partitioned into two subframes for pipelined execution to improve GPU utilization. The flow chart is redetermined to solve data hazards in the pipelined execution. Two new methods are introduced in the proposed ME: decision of a representative search center position (RSCP) and warp-based concurrent parallel reduction (WCPR). A RSCP employs motion vectors of a co-located CTU in a previously encoded frame to solve a dependency problem in parallel computation with negligible coding loss. WCPR concurrently executes several parallel reduction operations, which increases the thread utilization from 20 to 89 % without any thread synchronization. The proposed encoder can make the portion of ME in the encoder negligible with 2.2 % bitrate increase against the HEVC test model (HM) encoder. In terms of ME, the proposed ME is 130.7 times faster than that of the HM encoder.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partly supported by Institute for Information and communications Technology Promotion (IITP) Grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (R0101-15-293, Development of Object-based Knowledge Convergence Service Platform using Image Recognition in Broadcasting Contents) and the Research Grant of Kwangwoon University in 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, Kwangwoon University, 20, Gwangun-ro, Nowon-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Dongkyu Lee & Seoung-Jun Oh

  2. Department of Computer Engineering, Kwangwoon University, 20, Gwangun-ro, Nowon-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Donggyu Sim

  3. Broadcasting and Telecommunications Media Research Laboratory, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, Korea

    Keeseong Cho

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  1. Dongkyu Lee
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  2. Donggyu Sim
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  3. Keeseong Cho
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  4. Seoung-Jun Oh
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Correspondence to Dongkyu Lee.

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Lee, D., Sim, D., Cho, K. et al. Fast motion estimation for HEVC on graphics processing unit (GPU). J Real-Time Image Proc 12, 549–562 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11554-015-0522-6

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