On the capabilities of intra-frame prediction in H.264 video encoders

Recent developments have given birth to the H.264/AVC, offering better bandwidth to video quality ratios than MPEG-2. It is expected that the H.264/AVC will take over the digital video market, replacing the use of MPEG-2 in most digital video applications. The complete migration to the new video-coding algorithm takes several years given the wide scale use of MPEG-2 in the market place today. In this paper, we study the capabilities of the infra-frame prediction, a part of a high-efficient H.264 encoder. We introduce the two different methods defined in the H.264 video coding standard for the infra-frame prediction. Then carry out a performance evaluation of these methods in terms of their computational cost and rate-distortion results. Finally, we outline a simple method to reduce the computational cost when time is the critical factor.