A New Fast Average-Based Inter Mode Decision Algorithm for Motion Estimation in H.264/AVC Standard

H.264/AVC promises significantly better performance compared to existing video compression standards, mainly due to its improved motion estimation. The motion estimation and mode decision has increased the H.264/AVC encoder complexity, considerably. In this paper, a new method for macro-block mode selection has been proposed, which significantly reduces the computational complexity. In the proposed scheme, the macro-block mode is determined by a simple comparison of its rate distortion cost with the average rate distortion cost of the coded macroblocks in SKIP mode. Experimental results indicate that the new method reduces the encoding time by 56.83% on average, with a negligible PSNR loss of only 0.0353 dB without any bit rate increase compared to the original H.264/AVC reference software. The proposed algorithm is well suited for low bit rate applications.

Keywords:

Video coding , Motion estimation , H.264/AVC , Time reduction