Unified Fast Partitioning Algorithm for Intra and Inter Predictions in Versatile Video Coding

The Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard adopts a more flexible partitioning structure beyond the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. The quadtree with nested multi-type tree (QTMT) partitioning structure greatly improves coding efficiency. Nevertheless, the typical recursive coding unit (CU) partitioning scheme causes a substantial increase in computational complexity at the encoder. In this paper, a unified fast algorithm is proposed for both intra and inter predictions, which makes use of various historical information of previously checked partitions. The proposed algorithm is implemented on top of the VVC reference software VTM-14.0. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an average 42.47%, 40.46%, and 40.38% encoder runtime reduction with only 0.45%, 1.08%, and 1.18% Bjøntegaard delta bitrate loss (BDBR) in All Intra (AI), Random Access (RA), and Low Delay P (LDP) configurations, respectively.