Fast mode decision algorithm for H.264 based on motion cost

The H.264 standard achieves higher compression efficiency than previous video coding standards with the rate-distortion optimized (RDO) method for mode decision; however, its high complexity causes a large amount of encoding time. In this paper, we propose a fast mode decision algorithm using early SKIP mode decision and motion cost to reduce the candidate modes. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the encoding time by 88% on average compared to the H.264 standard.