Improved inter mode decision for H.264/AVC using weighted prediction

H.264/AVC video coding standard outperforms former standards in terms of coding efficiency but at the expense of higher computation complexity. Of all the encoding elements in H.264, inter prediction is computationally most intensive and thus adds to the computational burden for the encoder. In this paper, we propose a fast inter prediction algorithm for JVT video coding standard H.264/ AVC. Prior to performing the motion estimation for inter prediction, characteristics like stationarity and homogeneity of each macroblock is determined. The macroblocks correlation with neighboring macroblocks in respect of predicted motion vectors and encoding modes are studied. Weights are assigned for these parameters and the final mode is selected based upon these weights. The average video encoding time reduction in the proposed method is 70% compared to the JVT benchmark JM12.4 while maintaining similar PSNR and bit rate. Experimental results for various test sequences at different resolutions are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.