Abstract: A system and method of performing motion estimation in a video encoder is enclosed. The system and method include calculating one or more candidate motion vectors for each macroblock of a video image to form a list of candidate motion vectors, calculating a second one or more candidate motion vectors using a sub-region of at least one macroblock of the video image to include in the list of candidate motion vectors, and comparing the calculated candidate motion vectors of a first macroblock with the calculated candidate motion vectors of at least one sub-region of the first macroblock to provide the estimated contribution to the candidate motion vector of the macroblock. The calculating a second one or more candidate motion vectors using a sub-region of at least one macroblock may include using an approximation different from the calculating one or more candidate motion vectors for each macroblock.

Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for graphics processing unit distributed work-item queuing. One or more work-items of a wavefront are queued into a first level queue of a compute unit. When one or more additional work-items exist, a queuing of the additional work-items into a second level queue of the compute unit is performed. The queuing of the work-items into the first and second level queue is performed based on an assignment technique.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for video processing are disclosed. In one embodiment the work of processing of different types of video frames is allocated between a plurality of computing resources. For example, different computing resources for can be used for I, P and B frames, where an I frame is an intra-frame encoded with no other frames as a reference; a P frame is encoded with one previous I or P frame as a reference and a B frame is encoded with one previous and one future frame as references. In one example, a central processing unit (CPU) performs encoding of I frames and P frames of a video and a graphics processing unit (GPU) performs initial encoding of B frames of the video in connection with a fixed function video encoder configured to perform entropy encoding of the B frames.

Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for graphics processing unit optimization via wavefront reforming including queuing one or more work-items of a wavefront into a plurality of queues of a compute unit. Each queue is associated with a particular processor within the compute unit. A plurality of work passes are performed. A determination is made which of the plurality of queues are below a threshold amount of work-items. Remaining one or more work-items from the queues with remaining ones of the work-items are redistributed to the below threshold queues. A subsequent work pass is performed. The, repeating of the determining, redistributing, and performing the subsequent work pass is done until all the queues are empty.

Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for graphics processing unit distributed work-item queuing. One or more work-items of a wavefront are queued into a first level queue of a compute unit. When one or more additional work-items exist, a queuing of the additional work-items into a second level queue of the compute unit is performed. The queuing of the work-items into the first and second level queue is performed based on an assignment technique.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for facilitating motion estimation in video processing are provided. Preferably, coordinates of a search area within a video frame are determined for each of a plurality of macroblocks (MBs) of a reference frame based upon a predicted location derived from the coordinates of the MB within the reference frame and motion estimation information. The video frame can be segmented into tiles and associated overlapping tile defined for at least some tiles. Search data is defined for each tile as pel data for each pixel within that tile and any associated tile. Macroblock searches are preferably conducted on a tile assignment basis with tile search assignments distributed among a plurality of processing elements. Each processing element preferably has a local memory it uses for the search data when performing a tile search assignment.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for utilizing coefficient compression in graphics decoding are provided. In one example, a computer processing unit (CPU) is interfaced with a graphic processing unit (GPU) where the CPU extracts coefficients and passes compressed coefficient data, preferably in uniformly sized data packets, to the GPU for decoding and coefficient processing. Preferably the extracted coefficients are inverse transform (iT) coefficients and CPU includes an encoder control component configured to adaptively select a coefficient encoding process for performing the iT coefficient data compression based on the data content of the iT coefficients such that data packets are generated that include data that indentifies the selected coefficient encoding process used for encoding the compressed iT coefficient data contained in the data packet.