Fast macroblock partition prediction for H.264/AVC

Variable block size motion compensation has been adopted by the emerging video coding standard H.264. For a macroblock, motion estimation on each block type has to be tested in H.264 to find the best block size in use. It results in high computational complexity when examining all possible block types. Thus, a fast block type prediction is proposed to reduce the complexity. The proposed method predicts a suitable macroblock partition according to the motion field distribution and correlation within the macroblock. Therefore, only the predicted mode should be tested in motion estimation