Fast Coding Unit Decision Algorithm for Compressing Depth Maps in HEVC

The stereoscopic video system creates a 3-D scene using the color map and the virtual view which is synthesized by the color and depth maps. Compressing 3-D video sequences is a crucial research issue. Based on Zhao et al.’s depth no-synthesis-error model, this paper presents a fast coding unit decision algorithm for compressing depth maps in HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding). The proposed coding unit decision algorithm determines, as early as possible, the minimum coding unit size required in the quadtree structure of HEVC while preserving an acceptable quality. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed coding unit decision algorithm computationally outperforms the one used in HEVC while incurring negligible degradation on both quality and bitrate performance.