In order to reach higher coding efficiency compared to its predecessor, a state-of-the-art video compression standard,\nthe High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), has been designed to rely on many improved coding tools and sophisticated\ntechniques. The new features are achieving significant coding efficiency but at the cost of huge implementation\ncomplexity. This complexity has increased the HEVC encoders� need for fast algorithms and hardware friendly\nimplementations. In fact, encoders have to perform the different encoding decisions, overcoming the real-time encoding\nconstraint while taking care of coding efficiency. In this sense, in order to reduce the encoding complexity, HEVC\nencoders rely on look-ahead mechanisms and pre-processing solutions. In this context, we propose a gradient-based\npre-processing stage. We investigate particularly the Prewitt operator used to generate the gradient and we propose\nnecessary approaches that enhance the gradient performance of detecting the HEVC intra modes. We also set different\nprobability scenarios, based on the gradient information, in order to speed up the mode search process. Moreover, we\npropose a gradient-based estimation of the texture complexity that we use for coding unit decision. Results show that\nthe proposed algorithm achieves a reduction of 42.8% in encoding time with an increase in BD rate of only 1.1%.
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