Fast inter mode selection for H.264/AVC using large block and zero motion consistency history

To achieve high coding efficiency, the new H.264/AVC standard developed more advanced coding tools than previous standards such as powerful prediction techniques and rate-distortion optimization. Although it can achieve high coding efficiency, it requires huge computation. To reduce the complexity, we propose a fast inter mode selection with early P8x8 mode rejection and early 16x16 block size detection by referring to two newly proposed block history measures. Simulation results show that without any noticeable degradation, the proposed method reduces total motion estimation time by 49% on average and overall encoding time by 30%. Furthermore the hybrid usage of the proposed method and the early SKIP mode decision in H.264/AVC reference model reduces whole encoding time by 47% on average.