Fast intra-prediction mode decision for H.264/AVC

In H.264/AVC, intra-prediction is utilized in the spatial domain. There are two types of intra prediction for luma-intra 16 times 16 and Intra 4 times 4. Four and nine modes are supported by intra 16 times 16 and intra 4 times 4, respectively. The full search is used to select the best modes in H.264, which is very computationally expensive. In order to speed up the mode selection procedure, a fast mode decision algorithm for intra prediction in H.264/AVC is proposed in this work. Experiment results show that the proposed method can efficiently save the computation cost with a negligible loss in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and unnoticeable increment in bit rate.