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In the latest High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) development, i.e., HEVC screen content coding extensions (HEVC-SCC), a hash-based inter-motion search/block matching scheme is adopted in the reference test model, which brings significant coding gains to code screen content. However, the hash table generation itself may take up to half the encoding time and is thus too complex for practical usage. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical hash design and the corresponding block matching scheme to significantly reduce the complexity of hash-based block matching. The hierarchical structure in the proposed scheme allows large block calculation to use the results of small blocks. Thus, we avoid redundant computation among blocks with different sizes, which greatly reduces complexity without compromising coding efficiency. The experimental results show that compared with the hash-based block matching scheme in the HEVC-SCC test model (SCM)-6.0, the proposed scheme reduces about 77% of hash processing time, which leads to 12% and 16% encoding time savings in random access (RA) and low-delay B coding structures. The proposed scheme has been adopted into the latest SCM. A parallel implementation of the proposed hash table generation on graphics processing unit (GPU) is also presented to show the high parallelism of the proposed scheme, which achieves more than 30 frames/s for 1080p sequences and 60 frames/s for 720p sequences. With the fast hash-based block matching integrated into x265 and the hash table generated on GPU, the encoder can achieve 11.8% and 14.0% coding gains on average for RA and low-delay P coding structures, respectively, for real-time encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike camera-captured video, screen content (SC) often contains a lot of repeating patterns, which makes some blocks used as references much more important than others. However, conventional rate-distortion optimization (RDO) schemes in video coding do not consider the dependence among image blocks, which often leads to a locally optimal parameter selection, especially for SC. In this paper, we present a weighted RDO scheme for SC coding (SCC), in which the repeating characteristics are taken into account when deciding RD tradeoff for each block. For one block, the number being referenced by the current picture and following pictures is estimated and based on the number, we set a proper weight in the RDO process to reflect its importance from a global point of view. To estimate the number being referenced, we propose a hash-based method to approximate the results to avoid the complexity of direct search. Experimental results show that compared with the High Efficiency Video Coding SCC reference software, 10.1%, 14.5%, and 2.2% on average and up to 25.7%, 39.8%, and 4.6% bit saving can be achieved by considering weights provided by our scheme for hierarchical-B, IBBB, and all intra coding structures, respectively. Thanks to our hash-based design, the complexity increase brought by the proposed scheme is marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]