Fast Intra Mode Decision Based on Block Orientation in High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC)

The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is latest standard that achieves higher encoding efficiency when compared to previous standards such as H.264/AVC with considerable increase in computation time. This paper details about an algorithm which can be used to perform Intra Mode decision in a faster method and thereby improving the overall performance of HEVC encoding without much compromise on quality. It detects the most probable intra prediction direction for the current block by checking the boundary pixels and thereby reducing the number of predictor candidates for the given block. This is applied at Largest Coding Unit (LCU) level and prediction direction identified is applied to each Partition Unit (PU) in that LCU. The average performance achieved is 13% faster compared to Reference HM 10.0 for all Intra frames.