Efficient all-zero block detection algorithm for H.264 integer transform

A maximum magnitude probability (MMP) model is introduced in this paper to study contributions of individual DCT coefficient to the all-zero block (AZB) detection. Based on the MMP model, an efficient AZB detection algorithm is proposed to reduce the overall computation complexity. The new method is further combined with a recently published multi-threshold method [6] to achieve an adaptive detection of all-zero DCT sub-blocks. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a remarkable reduction of computational complexity from the original H.264 encoder with minor PSNR loss. Some comparison with similar lossy encoding schemes is also presented.