An early CU partition mode decision algorithm in VVC based on variogram for virtual reality 360 degree videos

Abstract 360-degree videos have become increasingly popular with the application of virtual reality (VR) technology. To encode such kind ultra-high resolution, an efficient and real-time video encoder becomes a key requirement. The Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard has good coding performance. However, it pretty high computational complexity which increasing cost videos. Among them, decision quadtree nested multi-type tree (QTMT) partitioning structure is one time-consuming procedures. In this paper, based on characteristics Equirectangular projection (ERP) format, empirical variogram combined Mahalanobis distance introduced to measure difference between horizontal vertical directions CU, fast partition algorithm proposed. experimental results show that saves 32.13% time only increase 0.66% in BDBR.