An efficient hierarchical video coding scheme combining visual perception characteristics.

Different visual perception characteristic saliencies are the key to constitute the low-complexity video coding framework. A hierarchical video coding scheme based on human visual systems (HVS) is proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme uses a joint video coding framework consisting of visual perception analysis layer (VPAL) and video coding layer (VCL). In VPAL, effective visual perception characteristics detection algorithm is proposed to achieve visual region of interest (VROI) based on the correlation between coding information (such as motion vector, prediction mode, etc.) and visual attention. Then, the interest priority setting for VROI according to visual perception characteristics is completed. In VCL, the optional encoding method is developed utilizing the visual interested priority setting results from VPAL. As a result, the proposed scheme achieves information reuse and complementary between visual perception analysis and video coding. Experimental results show that the proposed hierarchical video coding scheme effectively alleviates the contradiction between complexity and accuracy. Compared with H.264/AVC (JM17.0), the proposed scheme reduces 80% video coding time approximately and maintains a good video image quality as well. It improves video coding performance significantly.