Game-theoretic rate-distortion-complexity optimization for HEVC

This paper presents an algorithm for rate-distortion-complexity optimization for the emerging High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, whose high computational requirements urge the need for low-complexity optimization algorithms. Optimization approaches need to specify different complexity profiles in order to tailor the computational load to the different hardware and power-supply resources of devices. In this work, we focus on optimizing the quantization parameter and partition depth in HEVC via a game-theoretic approach. The proposed rate control strategy alone provides 0.2 dB improvement compared to the approach implemented in HEVC reference software, while rate-distortion-complexity optimization allows very accurate complexity control providing at the same time rate-distortion performance close to the optimal one.