A complexity analysis of the video part of the emerging ISO/IEC MPEG-4 standard was performed as a basis for HW/SW partitioning for VLSI implementation of a portable MPEG-4 terminal. While the computational complexity of previously standardized video coding schemes was predictable for I-, P- and B-frames over time, the support of arbitrarily shaped visual objects as well as various coding options within MPEG-4 introduce now content dependent computational requirements with significant variance. In this paper the result of a time dependent complexity analysis of the encoding and decoding process of a binary shape coded video object (VO) and the comparison with a rectangular shaped VO is given for the complete codec as well as for the single tools of the encoding and decoding process. It is shown, that the average MB complexity per arbitrary shaped P-VOP depicts significant variation over time for the encoder and minor variations for the decoder.

Date Published: 9 January 1998
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 3309, Visual Communications and Image Processing '98, (9 January 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.298362

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3309:
Visual Communications and Image Processing '98
Sarah A. Rajala; Majid Rabbani, Editor(s)