A Dynamic Search Range Algorithm for Stabilized Reduction of Memory Traffic in Video Encoder

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology Vol. 20; no. 7; pp. 1041 - 1046
• Main Authors: JUNG, Jongpil, KIM, Jaemoon, KYUNG, Chong-Min
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-07-2010; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applied sciences; Automatic voltage control; Bandwidth; Circuit properties; Detection, estimation, filtering, equalization, prediction; Dynamic range; Dynamic search range (DRS); Dynamical systems; Dynamics; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronics; embedded compression; Encoders; Exact sciences and technology; Fluctuations; H.264/advanced video coding (AVC); Heuristic algorithms; Image processing; Image quality; Information, signal and communications theory; memory bandwidth; Miscellaneous; Motion estimation; Searching; Signal and communications theory; Signal convertors; Signal processing; Signal, noise; Telecommunications and information theory; Traffic engineering; Traffic flow; Video codecs; Video coding; Video compression; Video coding; embedded compression; Motion estimation; Image processing; Coding circuit; H.264/advanced video coding (AVC); Video codecs; Video signal processing; Search algorithm; Degradation; Image quality; memory bandwidth; Dynamic search range (DRS); Compression ratio; Signal processing; Call centres; Damaging
• ISSN: 1051-8215; 1558-2205
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2010.2046054

Embedded compression is commonly employed in a video codec to reduce the data traffic to/from off-chip frame memory. We proposed a method for maintaining the memory bandwidth requirement at a significantly reduced level through dynamic search range adjustment for the motion estimation based on the observed relationship between the compression ratio and the motion vector. This, together with the so-called "center moving" to adjust the newly incoming macroblocks, helped significantly lower the requirement of the memory bandwidth without a fluctuation. Experimental results have shown that the memory bandwidth requirement can be finally stabilized to 20% of that of the full search. The image quality degradation was merely 0.02 dB.