Fast and efficient intrapre- diction method for H.264/AVC

A new intraprediction method is proposed to decrease coding complexity as well as improve coding efficiency of H.264/AVC. Whether the predicted values of different prediction modes are similar is determined according to the proposed rules. When the predicted values are similar, the average of such values is used to predict the current block without invoking the rate-distortion optimization process. Experimental results show that by integrating the proposed method in the H.264/AVC codec, 39.25% coding time can be saved; meanwhile, the average bit-rate reduction is 2.62% under the same peak signal-to-noise ratio of reconstructed videos. © 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.3377968 Subject terms: intraprediction; rate distortion optimization; H.264/AVC. Paper 090966LR received Dec. 11, 2009; revised manuscript received Feb. 20, 2010; accepted for publication Mar. 9, 2010; published online Apr. 7, 2010.