H.264/AVC standard is one of the most popular video formats for the next generation video coding. It provides a better performance in compression capability and visual quality compared to any existing video coding standards. Intra-frame mode selection and inter-frame mode selection are new features introduced in the H.264/ AVC standard. Intra-frame mode selection dramatically reduces spatial redundancy in I-frames, while inter-frame mode selection significantly affects the output quality of P-/B-frames by selecting an optimal block size with motion vector(s) or a mode for each macroblock. Unfortunately, this feature requires a myriad amount of encoding time especially when a brute force full-search method is utilised. In this report, we propose fast mode-selection algorithms tailored for both intra-frames and inter-frames. The proposed fast intra-frame mode algorithm is achieved by reducing the computational complexity of the Lagrangian rate-distortion optimisation evaluation. Two proposed fast inter-frame mode algorithms incorporate several robust and reliable predictive factors, including intrinsic complexity of the macroblock, mode knowledge from the previous frame(s), temporal similarity detection and the detection of different moving features within a macroblock, to effectively reduce the number of search operations. Complete and extensive simulations are provided respectively in these two chapters to demonstrate the performances. Finally, we combine our contributions to form two novel fast mode algorithms for H.264/AVC video coding. The simulations on different classes of test sequences demonstrate a speed up in encoding time of up to 86% compared with the H.264/AVC benchmark. This is achieved without any significant degradation in picture quality and compression ratio.
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