Efficient Intra Mode Prediction Decision for MPEG-2 To H.264/AVC Transcoding

The wide deployment of MPEG-2 video and the extra benefits of the features introduced by H.264/AVC, create a strong need for video transcoding between these two standards. The key issue in video transcoding is to minimize the complexity while maximizing the quality. After analyzing the differences and similarities between these two standards, such as intra coding, an efficient intra prediction mode decision algorithm is proposed for MPEG-2 to H.264 video transcoder. It reuses the side information gathered in the video decoding stage to simplify the mode and direction decision process for intra prediction. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with cascaded pixel video transcoding (CPDT), the proposed approach can maintain similar PSNR and bitrate, while considerably reducing the computational complexity. Therefore, it can be used as part of an efficient MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoder