An efficient depth modeling mode decision algorithm for 3D-HEVC depth map coding

With the purpose of augmenting immersive perception, 3D video coding extension of High Efficiency Video Coding (3D-HEVC) standard is developed. This extension employs Multiview Video plus Depth (MVD) format in which immediate virtual view texture videos can be rendered by adjacent depth maps, so that bitrates and coding runtime of multiview video are saved. A good preservation of depth map is vital to synthesize high-quality virtual view texture videos. Hence, several new depth map coding tools have been introduced into 3D-HEVC, such as Depth Modeling Mode (DMM) decision. However, the numerous DMM candidates result in a huge computational complexity, which prevents 3D-HEVC for practical use. To this end, we propose an efficient DMM decision algorithm for 3D-HEVC depth map coding, which incorporates unnecessary depth blocks skipping approach and Contour pattern early termination method. Simulated experiment results state that the proposed efficient DMM decision method can save about 31.33% coding time on average with only 0.01 dB of PSNR drop and just 0.60% bitrate increase on average compared to the original 3D-HEVC encoder.