Complexity control of fast motion estimation in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC with rate-distortion-complexity optimization

A complexity control algorithm for H.264 advanced video coding is proposed. The algorithm can control the complexity of integer inter motion estimation for a given target complexity. The Rate-Distortion-Complexity performance is improved by a complexity prediction model, simple analysis of the past statistics and a control scheme. The algorithm also works well for scene change condition. Test results for coding interlaced video (720 x576 PAL) are reported.