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Performance evaluation of all intra Kvazaar and x265 HEVC encoders on embedded system Nvidia Jetson platform

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Abstract

The growing demand for high-quality video requires complex coding techniques that cost resource consumption and increase encoding time which represents a challenge for real-time processing on Embedded Systems. Kvazaar and x265 encoders are two efficient implementations of the High-Efficient Video Coding (HEVC) standard. In this paper, the performance of All Intra Kvazaar and x265 encoders on the Nvidia Jetson platform was evaluated using two coding configurations; highspeed preset and high-quality preset. In our work, we used two scenarios, first, the two encoders were run on the CPU, and based on the average encoding time Kvazaar proved to be 65.44% and 69.4% faster than x265 with 1.88% and 0.6% BD-rate improvement over x265 at high-speed and high-quality preset, respectively. In the second scenario, the two encoders were run on the GPU of the Nvidia Jetson, and the results show the average encoding time under each preset is reduced by half of the CPU-based scenario. In addition, Kvazaar is 54.5% and 56.70% faster with 1.93% and 0.45% BD-rate improvement over x265 at high-speed and high-quality preset, respectively. Regarding the scalability, the two encoders on the CPU are linearly scaled up to four threads and speed remains constant afterward. On the GPU, the two encoders are scaled linearly with the number of threads. The obtained results confirmed that, Kvazaar is more efficient and that it can be used on Embedded Systems for real-time video applications due to its high speed and performance over the x265 HEVC encoder

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their sincerest appreciation to the Japanese and Egyptian governments for graciously supporting the TICAD-7 scholarship. This research is an essential component of this scholarship, and the provided financial support has been critical in the successful completion of this paper. We appreciate the opportunities offered by this scholarship, which have significantly helped the progress of our research efforts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, New Borg El-Arab City, Alexandria, 21934, Egypt

    R. James, Mohammed Abo-Zahhad & Mohammed S. Sayed

  2. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Assiut University, Assiut, 71515, Egypt

    Mohammed Abo-Zahhad

  3. Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Koji Inoue

  4. Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

    Mohammed S. Sayed

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Contributions

The authors participated in the work presented in this paper. The experiments were carried out by James R. and Mohammed S. Sayed, Mohammed Abo-Zahhad, and Kuji Inoui analyzed the results. The paper was written by James R. and revised and corrected by Mohammed S. Sayed, Mohammed Abo-Zahhad, and Kuji Inoui. The final version of the manuscript was read and approved by all authors.

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Correspondence to R. James.

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James, R., Abo-Zahhad, M., Inoue, K. et al. Performance evaluation of all intra Kvazaar and x265 HEVC encoders on embedded system Nvidia Jetson platform. J Real-Time Image Proc 21, 67 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11554-024-01429-5

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