All zero block detection for HEVC based on the quantization level of the maximum transform coefficient

Transform/quantization (T/Q) is one of the high complex modules in high efficiency video coding (HEVC). In this paper, all zero block (AZB) detection algorithm for HEVC is proposed to reduce the complexity of T/Q. The proposed AZB detection algorithm is based on the quantization level of the maximum transform coefficient, which is suitable for both uniform quantizer (UQ) and rate-distortion optimized quantizer (RDOQ). Experimental results show that 46% complexity of T/Q for UQ and 42% for RDOQ can be reduced with negligible loss of video quality and compression efficiency, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods.