Two-pass approach for fast block-type decision in H.264 encoder

This paper proposes a fast encoding method for H.264, which adopts two-pass approach for block-type decision. In the first pass, one candidate blocktype is determined from seven inter block types using limited search range. The second pass finally decides the best blocktype from the candidate inter blocktypes and intra blocktypes. In experimental results, rate-distortion performance and computational complexity of the proposed method are analyzed for two video sequences. The proposed method achieves remarkable improvement in computational complexity with only small degradation in PSNR compared to the full-motion estimation (ME) method.