Methods and Systems for Parallel Video Encoding and Decoding

• US 20100027680A1
• Filed: 10/14/2009
• Published: 02/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America Incorporated (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America Incorporated (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Zhao, Jie, Segall, Christopher A.
• Application Number:
  US12/579,236
• Publication Number:
  US 20100027680A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 375/240.240
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/119 Adaptive subdivision aspects, e.g. subdivision of a picture into rectangular or non-rectangular coding blocks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/136 Incoming video signal characteristics or properties
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/15 by monitoring actual compressed data size at the memory before deciding storage at the transmission buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/159 Prediction type, e.g. intra-frame, inter-frame or bidirectional frame prediction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/17 the unit being an image region, e.g. an object
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/172 the region being a picture, frame or field
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/174 the region being a slice, e.g. a line of blocks or a group of blocks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/184 the unit being bits, e.g. of the compressed video stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/192 the adaptation method, adaptation tool or adaptation type being iterative or recursive
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/40 using video transcoding, i.e. partial or full decoding of a coded input stream followed by re-encoding of the decoded output stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/43 Hardware specially adapted for motion estimation or compensation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/436 using parallelised computational arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/44 Decoders specially adapted therefor, e.g. video decoders which are asymmetric with respect to the encoder
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/46 Embedding additional information in the video signal during the compression process H04N19/517, H04N19/68, H04N19/70 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/463 by compressing encoding parameters before transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/61 in combination with predictive coding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/70 characterised by syntax aspects related to video coding, e.g. related to compression standards
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/80 Details of filtering operations specially adapted for video compression, e.g. for pixel interpolation H04N19/635, H04N19/86 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/91 Entropy coding, e.g. variable length coding [VLC] or arithmetic coding

Abstract

Aspects of the present invention are related to systems and methods for parallel video encoding and decoding.

Claims

1. A method for encoding a video frame of a video sequence, said method comprising:

a) in an encoder, partitioning a frame of a video sequence into at least one reconstruction slice, thereby producing a first reconstruction slice; and

b) in said encoder, partitioning said first reconstruction slice into a plurality of entropy slices, wherein the number of bins associated with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is less than a predefined number of bins.

2. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the number of macroblocks associated with said first reconstruction slice is less than a predefined number of macroblocks.

3. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the number of macroblocks associated with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is less than a predefined number of macroblocks.

4. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the number of bits associated with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is less than a predefined number of bits.

5. The method as described in claim 4, wherein the number of macroblocks associated with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is less than a predefined number of macroblocks.

6. The method as described in claim 1, wherein said predefined number of bins is associated with a profile associated with said encoder.

7. The method as described in claim 1, wherein said predefined number of bins is associated with a level conformance point associated with said encoder.

8. The method as described in claim 1, wherein said predefined number of bins depends on at least one parameter selected from the group consisting of bit rate, image size and number of macroblocks.

9. The method as described in claim 1 further comprising associating an entropy-slice header with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices.

10. The method as described in claim 1 further comprising associating an entropy-slice flag with a bitstream generated using said plurality of entropy slices.

11. A method for encoding a video frame of a video sequence, said method comprising:

a) in an encoder, partitioning a frame of a video sequence into at least one reconstruction slice, thereby producing a first reconstruction slice; and

b) in said encoder, partitioning said first reconstruction slice into a plurality of entropy slices, wherein the size of each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is smaller than a predefined size, wherein said predefined size is related to at least one size measure selected from the group consisting of number of bits, number of bins and number of macroblocks.

12. The method as described in claim 11, wherein the number of macroblocks associated with said first reconstruction slice is less than a predefined number of macroblocks.

13. The method as described in claim 11, wherein said predefined size is associated with a profile associated with said encoder.

14. The method as described in claim 11, wherein said predefined size is associated with a level conformance point associated with said encoder.

15. The method as described in claim 11, wherein said predefined size depends on at least one parameter selected from the group consisting of bit rate, image size and total number of macroblocks.

16. The method as described in claim 11 further comprising associating an entropy-slice header with each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices.

17. The method as described in claim 11 further comprising associating an entropy-slice flag with a bitstream generated using said plurality of entropy slices

18. A method for generating a video bitstream for parallel decoding, said method comprising:

a) receiving, at a decoder, a first video bitstream;

b) identifying a reconstruction slice in said video bitstream;

c) entropy decoding a plurality of symbols from said reconstruction slice, thereby producing entropy-decoded data associated with said reconstruction slice;

d) partitioning said entropy-decoded data associated with said reconstruction slice into a plurality of entropy slices associated with said reconstruction slice, wherein the size of each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is smaller than a predefined size, wherein said predefined size is related to at least one size measure selected from the group consisting of number of bits, number of bins and number of macroblocks;

e) independently entropy encoding the entropy-decoded data of each entropy slice of said plurality of entropy slices, thereby producing a plurality of entropy-encoded entropy slices; and

f) generating a second video bitstream comprising said plurality of entropy-encoded entropy slices.

19. A method for decoding a video bitstream, said method comprising decoding a plurality of entropy slices associated with a reconstruction slice, wherein the size of each entropy slice in said plurality of entropy slices is smaller than a predefined size, wherein said predefined size is related to at least one size measure selected from the group consisting of number of bits, number of bins and number of macroblocks.

20. The method as described in claim 19, wherein said predefined size is associated with a profile associated with said encoder.