3D high definition video coding on a GPU-based heterogeneous system

Abstract

H.264/MVC is a standard for supporting the sensation of 3D, based on coding from 2 (stereo) to N views. H.264/MVC adopts many coding options inherited from single view H.264/AVC, and thus its complexity is even higher, mainly because the number of processing views is higher. In this manuscript, we aim at an efficient parallelization of the most computationally intensive video encoding module for stereo sequences. In particular, inter prediction and its collaborative execution on a heterogeneous platform. The proposal is based on an efficient dynamic load balancing algorithm and on breaking encoding dependencies. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm's ability to reduce the encoding time for different stereo high definition sequences. Speed-up values of up to 90× were obtained when compared with the reference encoder on the same platform. Moreover, the proposed algorithm also provides a more energy-efficient approach and hence requires less energy than the sequential reference algorithm