Fast Frame/Field Coding for H.264/AVC

Picture-adaptive frame/field (PAFF) coding and macroblock-adaptive frame/field (MBAFF) coding in the new H.264/AVC can improve compression efficiency for interlaced video coding. It is assumed that the optimal solution can be found by employing a multi-pass strategy, which encodes a macroblock or picture with all possible modes and chooses the one with smallest rate-distortion cost, such as the threepass coding for PAFF and MBAFF coding in reference of H.264/AVC. However, this coding strategy needs high computational complexity. In this paper, a novel single-pass algorithm based on motion activity detection is proposed to predict the mode of PAFF and MBAFF coding in an analysis stage. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reduce computational complexity by approximate 60%-75% compared to the three-pass coding method, while maintaining grate coding efficiency.