Quadtree decision for depth intra coding in 3D-HEVC by good feature

3D-HEVC is a good coding solution for multi-view video plus depth data. It achieves good coding performance of synthesized views. However, depth intra coding brings unbearable complexity, which is the most urgent issue to be solved for the practical applications. Typically, depth maps have a good feature of structure or less texture compared with natural videos. Therefore, in this paper, a fast depth intra coding algorithm is proposed to speed up the quadtree decision by the good feature-corner point (CP). The proposed algorithm can adaptively extract CPs and preallocate the depth level of coding quadtree. The large size of coding units (CUs) can be skipped for blocks, which have higher predicted depth level. On the contrary, the blocks, with lower predicted depth level, do not check the smaller size of CUs. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can provide about 41% time reduction while maintaining the BD performance.