In response to the growing demand for high-quality videos, Versatile Video Coding (VVC) was released in 2020, building on the hybrid coding architecture of its predecessor, HEVC, achieving about 50% bitrate reduction for the same visual quality. It introduces more flexible block partitioning, enhancing compression efficiency at the cost of increased encoding complexity. To make efficient use of VVC in practical applications, optimization is essential. VVenC, an optimized open-source VVC encoder, introduces multiple presets to address the trade-off between compression efficiency and encoder complexity. Although an optimized set of encoding tools has been selected for each preset, the rate-distortion (RD) search space in the encoder presets still poses a challenge for efficient encoder implementations. In this paper, we propose Early Termination using Reference Frames (ETRF), which improves the trade-off between encoding efficiency and time complexity and positions itself as a new preset between medium and fast presets. The CTU partitioning map of the reference frames in lower temporal layers is employed to accelerate the encoding of frames in higher temporal layers. The results show a reduction in the encoding time of around 21% compared to the medium preset. Specifically, for videos with high spatial and temporal complexities, which typically require longer encoding times, the proposed method achieves a better trade-off between bitrate savings and encoding time compared to the fast preset.

翻译：为应对高质量视频日益增长的需求，通用视频编码标准于2020年发布。该标准在其前代HEVC的混合编码架构基础上进行扩展，在同等视觉质量下实现了约50%的码率降低。VVC引入了更灵活的块分区机制，以提升编码复杂度为代价增强了压缩效率。为在实际应用中有效利用VVC，优化工作至关重要。优化开源VVC编码器VVenC通过引入多级预设配置来平衡压缩效率与编码复杂度。尽管每个预设已选用经过优化的编码工具集，但编码器预设中的率失真搜索空间仍对高效编码实现构成挑战。本文提出基于参考帧的提前终止算法，该算法改善了编码效率与时间复杂度之间的权衡关系，可视为介于中等与快速预设之间的新预设方案。该方法利用较低时域层级中参考帧的CTU分区映射来加速较高时域层级帧的编码过程。实验结果表明，相较于中等预设，该方法可降低约21%的编码时间。特别对于具有高空间复杂度与时域复杂度的视频（通常需要更长编码时间），所提方法在码率节省与编码时间方面相比快速预设实现了更优的权衡。