Fast inter mode decision using residual homogeneity in H.264/AVC

摘要

The H.264/AVC coding standard has achieved significant coding gain by using flexible block sizes inter prediction. However, the complexity of inter-mode decision is extremely high. In this paper, a fast inter-mode decision algorithm is presented by exploiting residual homogeneity for both macroblock and sub-macroblock levels. In this algorithm, the residual homogeneity indicators calculated in three directions are used to identify the block's homogeneous characteristic. Normalized motion vector activity is also considered to improve the performance. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm achieves about 49% of computational complexity saving in terms of encoding time, while with negligible quality degradation, compared to H.264/AVC reference software JM.