An Adaptive and Fast H.264 Multi-Frame Selection Algorithm Based on Information from Previous Searches

The H.264 video coding standard adopts multiple reference frames for motion estimation. This new feature improves the prediction accuracy of inter-coding blocks significantly, but it results in a considerable increase in encoder complexity, mainly regarding to multi-frame selection and motion estimation. The reference software JM adopts the full search scheme, and the increased computation is in proportion to the number of searched reference frames. However, the reduction of prediction residues is highly dependent on the nature of sequences, not on the number of searched frames. In this paper, we propose an adaptive and fast multi-frame selection algorithm (AFMFS) based on motion vectors and SAD information coming from previous searches to adaptively terminate the procedure of multiple reference frames selection. Compared with the full search algorithm and the flexible multi-reference frame search criterion (FMRFSC), simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can save 55.28% and 40.23% computation cost on average, respectively, while it still maintains similar coding efficiency.