Motion vector predictor selection for the enhancement layer in the H.264/AVC extension-spatial SVC

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has been approved as the extension of the H.264/AVC video coding standard recently. In current spatial scalability scheme, the technique to examine both inter modes with residual prediction and without residual prediction for enhancement layers can achieve the highest possible coding efficiency, but it\´s typically one of the most time-consuming parts of a video encoder. In this paper, we propose a method to skip half of motion estimation processes under "inter modes without residual prediction" based on the motion vector predictor selection under "inter modes with residual prediction". Experimental results show that our proposed scheme can achieve up to 24% time saving for motion estimation in the enhancement layer and meanwhile the coding efficiency can be preserved very well.