Cross-Block Difference Guided Fast CU Partition for VVC Intra Coding

In this paper, we propose a new fast CU partition algorithm for VVC intra coding based on cross-block difference. This difference is measured by the gradient and the content of sub-blocks obtained from partition and is employed to guide the skipping of unnecessary horizontal and vertical partition modes. With this guidance, a fast determination of block partitions is accordingly achieved. Compared with VVC, our proposed method can save 41.64% (on average) encoding time with only 0.97% (on average) increase of BD-rate.
Comment: Accepted by 2021 VCIP