H.264/AVC Low Complexity Encoding: A Novel Fast Coding Mode Selection Solution

The ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) formed, in December 2001, the Joint Video Team (JVT) with the purpose to develop a new video coding standard that it is usually known as H.264/AVC, H.264 for ITU-T and Advanced Video Coding (AVC) for MPEG. The main objective was to achieve at least the double of the coding compression, for the same video quality, when compared to all the available video coding standards [1]. This target was successfully achieved using new techniques that explore more and better the irrelevance and the redundancy inside and between video frames. However, the H.264/AVC achieves additional compression efficiency at the cost of high encoding complexity what is typically not acceptable for many applications, notably real-time. To overcome this problem, and because H.264/AVC encoders are not normative, the development of low complexity encoding tools significantly reducing the encoding complexity at a rather low cost in terms of compression efficiency, is currently a very hot topic of research. In this context, this paper proposes a novel coding mode selection tool which allows reducing the complexity of the coding mode selection process without much compression penalties. Performance results will be provided for several test sequences.