Fast Algorithm for H.264/avc Intra Prediction Based on Discrete Wavelet Transform

H.264 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is the new world-wide accepted international Standard for video coding, approved by ITU-T and ISO. New Tools have been added to improve the coding efficiency allowing a save up above of 50%, when is compared with previous standards (H.263, MPEG-2 y MPEG-4). From April 2007 there is a new set of profiles known as “all-Intra”. They were born as a sub-set from the “High” profile and have reached a high impact within broadcast industry where the highest quality video formats are demanded. The high efficiency of “all-Intra” mode in H.264 is due to Rate Distortion Optimization (RDO) technique. RDO chooses for each macroblock (MB) the best partition mode and directional prediction. However, the computational burden becomes extremely high due to huge number of prediction-prediction modes that should be evaluated. This article shows a new algorithm for fast partition mode algorithm based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). It allows reducing the number of candidate modes to those which are strictly defined for each partition. By using the local 2D-DWT over each MB, information of the homogeneity is obtained. It is got from multiresolution analysis of the transformed coefficients in each sub-band. This way it is easier to classify quickly the optimum partition mode avoiding the exhaustive seek made by RDO.