Abstract: A new method for fast stereo video encoding based on AVS is presented. In the system, the left-view sequence is encoded by an AVS encoder. For the right-view sequence, combined predictions from the temporal or disparity domains are exploited, with a hierarchical two-stage neural classifier for fast mode decision. The first stage produces different candidates for variable block partitions of each macro-block (MB). The second stage chooses the most suitable prediction sources between forward motion and disparity frames. An improved sum-of-absolutedifferences (SAD) algorithm is proposed in disparity estimation. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve time savings up to 80% with negligible quality degradation, and bit-rate increase of only 7%.

Key words: stereo video coding, neural classifier, disparity estimation, AVS