Inter mode selection for H.264/AVC using time-efficient learning-theoretic algorithms

In this paper we present a novel algorithm to speed up the inter mode decision process for the H.264/AVC encoding. The proposed inter mode decision scheme determines the best coding mode between P16x16 and P8x8 based on learning theoretic classification algorithms to discern between mode classes based on the evaluation of a simple set of features extracted from a motion compensated macroblock. We show that the proposed method can reduce the number of macroblocks for P8x8 mode testing by 80% on average, at the cost of only a small loss of 0.1 dB in compression performance. ©2009 IEEE.