Efficient H.264/AVC Video Encoder Where Pattern Is Used as Extra Mode for Wide Range of Video Coding

Pattern-based video coding representing moving regions in macroblock has very good potential for improved coding efficiency over existing standard H.264/AVC in the very low bit-rate range. However, the coding efficiency diminishes compared to H.264 with the bit rates because variable block sizes of H.264 for motion estimation and compensation are successfully selected for any bit rates using weighting between bit rate and image quality. The existing pattern-based video coding scheme could not handle this flexibility with bit rates due to its fixed size and lack of verification with other modes of H.264. In this paper we propose two large and one small pre-defined pattern sets and treat them as extra modes of H.264. We also investigate the weighting factor between bit rate and image quality compared to the existing one. The experimental results confirm the superiority of our approach compared to H.264 and other existing pattern-based video coding for not only the very low bit rate range but also wide range of bit rates.