A Novel Fast Mode Selection Algorithm for Intra Prediction Based on Characteristics of Blocks Reference Pixels

Intra-prediction is one of the new techniques adopted by H.264. Compared with the previous video coding standards, H.264 improves coding performance greatly. However, the computation load of H.264 video coding increases drastically. This paper investigates improvement of encoding speed for H.264 with special focus on fast intra prediction mode selection. Some experimental analyses indicate that the luminance values of the reference pixels for each 44 luminance block are commonly similar, and in that case, the prediction blocks of the nine prediction modes are also similar. According to this feature of 44 luminance block, a fast mode selection algorithm for intra prediction is proposed. Experimental results show the proposed scheme is very effective. Compared with JM92 in H.264 encoder, it reduces 46% encoding time while maintaining the PSNR and bit rate.