Adaptive Motion Estimation and Mode Decision Strategy for H.264 Encoder

In order to reduce the heavy computation burden of H.264 encoder, an adaptive scheme is proposed to jointly optimize motion estimation and mode decision process. The proposed algorithm utilizes the spatial homogeneity of video object´s textures, the motion activity information and the statistical characters on reference frame selection in motion estimation, to effectively skip unnecessary modes and reference frames. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a reduction of 40-80% encoding time, with a negligible PSNR loss and bit-rate increase