Efficient Intra Mode Decision for AVS to H.264/AVC Transcoding

This paper presents an AVS to H.264 Intra video transcoder. AVS is the latest video coding standard developed by China. The two video coding standards will coexist in the market in the future, so it is necessary to transcode the AVS to H.264. The INTRA16xl6 vs. INTRA4x4 MB coding mode decision is made based on the variance of the ICT coefficients of the 8x8 blocks in the input AVS video. Then, the prediction mode will be decided using a fast mapping algorithm. The proposed approach completely avoids the MB mode and prediction mode computations in the H.264 encoding stage, the results show that our approach results in over 60% drop in encoding time with a negligible drop in PSNR.