SKIP THRESHOLDING IN PIPELINED VIDEO ENCODERS

摘要

The video encoders described herein may make an initial determination to designate a macroblock as a skip macroblock, but may subsequently reverse that decision based on additional information. For example, an initial skip mode decision may be based on aggregate distortion metrics for the luma component of the macroblock (e.g., SAD, SATD, or SSD), then reversed based on an individual pixel difference metric, an aggregate or individual pixel metric for a chroma component of the macroblock, or on the position of the macroblock within a macroblock row. The final skip mode decision may be based, at least in part, on the maximum difference between any pixel in the macroblock (or in a region of interest within the macroblock) and the corresponding pixel in a reference frame. The initial skip mode decision may be made during an early stage of a pipelined video encoding process and reversed in a later stage.

主权项

1. An apparatus, comprising:
a block processing pipeline that implements a plurality of stages each comprising at least one component, each component configured to perform one or more operations on a macroblock of pixels from a video frame passing through the pipeline; wherein one or more components of the block processing pipeline are collectively configured to:
generate an initial determination that a macroblock of pixels should be designated as a skip macroblock, wherein designation of the macroblock as a skip macroblock indicates that the macroblock should be represented by a macroblock predictor rather than by an encoding of a motion vector difference and a residual for the macroblock, and wherein to generate the initial determination, the one or more components are configured to compute one or more aggregate metrics for a representation of a luma component of the macroblock;subsequent to generation of the initial determination, determine that the macroblock should not be designated as a skip macroblock; andsubsequent to the determination that the macroblock should not be designated as a skip macroblock, provide a motion vector difference and a residual for the macroblock to one or more other components of the block processing pipeline.