Improved lossless coding algorithm in H.264/AVC based on hierarchical intra prediction

In this paper, an improved lossless intra prediction algorithm based on H.264/AVC framework is proposed. In the new algorithm, samples in a macroblock/block are hierarchically predicted, instead of using a block-based prediction as a whole. More specifically, four groups are extracted from the samples in the MB/block. Samples in the first group are firstly predicted based on directional intra prediction method, and then samples in other groups are predicted using the samples in the first group as the reference. As a result, the information left in the residual block can be reduced since the samples can be predicted accurately by using nearer references. Experimental results show that compared with other methods in the literature the proposed algorithm gives a much better compression performance with the lowest encoding complexity.