Spatial-temporal correlation based mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC

In this work, a fast mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC is proposed. H.264/AVC achieves high coding efficiency by introducing rate-distortion optimized (RDO) method. However, it induced very high computation complexity. In order to reduce the computation complexity of the encoder of H.264/AVC, the proposed algorithm efficiently reduces the candidate modes. The proposed algorithm includes an early skip mode decision method and an adaptive rate distortion cost threshold for early INTER mode decision. An complexity reduction algorithm for INTRA modes which uses the information during INTER mode selection is also proposed. The experimental results show that compared with full-search algorithm the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 70-89% speed up with very slight PSNR loss.