H.264 encoding of videos with large number of shot transitions using long-term reference pictures

Long-term reference prediction is an important feature of the H.264/AVC standard, which provides a trade-off between gain and complexity. A simple long-term reference selection method is presented for videos with frequent shot/view transitions in order to optimize compression efficiency at the shot boundaries. Experimental results show up to 50% reduction in the number of bits, at the same PSNR, for frames at the border of transitions.