A Low Complexity Algorithm for H.264/AVC Intra Prediction

Intra prediction plays an important role in H.264/AVC. To reduce the complexity of the intra prediction of H.264/AVC, this paper proposes an efficient intra prediction algorithm. First, we determine if a macro block (MB) is flat or detailed rich by comparing its texture feature with dual thresholds criterion. Then, the flat MBs will be encoded in Intra 16×16 mode and those relatively rich MBs are encoded in Intra 4×4 mode. Second, an efficient Intra 4×4 mode selection algorithm is also proposed to reduce the number of candidates of intra prediction modes. The experimental results show that the encoding time of I-frame is reduced by an average of 30%, and both the increment in output bit rate and decrement in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) are negligible.