Fast inter mode decision using residual homogeneity in H.264/AVC

The H.264/AVC coding standard has achieved significant coding gain by using flexible block sizes inter prediction. However, the complexity of inter-mode decision is extremely high. In this paper, a fast inter-mode decision algorithm is presented by exploiting residual homogeneity for both macroblock and sub-macroblock levels. In this algorithm, the residual homogeneity indicators calculated in three directions are used to identify the block´s homogeneous characteristic. Normalized motion vector activity is also considered to improve the performance. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm achieves about 49% of computational complexity saving in terms of encoding time, while with negligible quality degradation, compared to H.264/AVC reference software JM.