Fast reference frame and inter-mode selection method for H.264/AVC

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient method for selecting the best reference frame (RF) and the best inter-mode in H.264/AVC. The proposed method employs a different examination order compared to conventional methods and examines the most important RF for all inter-modes in the first step. Then, in the second step, it further examines the best mode from the first step for all available RFs. Finally, in the third step, it additionally examines the remaining modes for the best RF determined in the second step. Based on the intermediate results after the first and second steps, the proposed method skips many less important RFs in each inter-mode and significantly reduces the coding complexity. However, the proposed method also shows very good performance in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio and bit rate, as it does not skip important RFs in each inter-mode. Simulation results show that the proposed method greatly reduces the encoding time while significantly improving the encoding performance of conventional methods.