Fast Mode Decision for Scalable Video Coding with Spatial Scalability

The H.264 scalable video coding (SVC) standard adopts three inter-layer prediction techniques to achieve high coding efficiency. However, to find out the best coding mode in large number of candidates, exhaustive search scheme results in extremely large computation complexity, which obstructs SVC from the practical application. To speed up the SVC encoder, a fast mode decision algorithm for spatial scalability is proposed in this paper. To reduce computation but maintain the same level of coding efficiency, the proposed algorithm makes full use of relationship between macroblock (MB) at enhancement layer (EL) and its co-located blocks at base layer (BL). Experimental results show that the proposed fast mode decision algorithm can significantly reduces the computational complexity in SVC with negligible PSNR loss and bit-rate increment.