Fast H.264 inter mode decision based on inter and intra block conditions

In H.264 advanced video coding (AVC), the inter prediction with variable block sizes plays an important role to achieve compression efficiency. Although it actually raises the coding efficiency in H.264, it also increases the complexity due to the decision of the best inter mode. In this paper, we will propose a fast algorithm based on neighboring information and homogeneous condition to select the best mode effectively. For each macroblock, we first select the initial mode by using probability table and then use homogeneous condition analysis with motion vector relation to accelerate the inter mode decision process. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm can save about 67-70% mode computation with negligible PSNR loss, which is very helpful for H.264 interframe coding.