An Efficient Coding of Intra Picture Prediction Modes for H.264/AVC

Video coding standard H.264/AVC employs nine-mode directional spatial prediction for intra picture coding. It predicts pixels to be encoded from previously decoded neighboring pixels within current picture. This paper presents an efficient coding method for H.264 intra picture prediction modes to enhance coding efficiency performance. The proposed method improves prediction of intra picture most probable mode (MPM), and applies Huffman coding to encode MPM pattern for every four 4times4 blocks. In addition, a combined intra picture prediction mode is discussed. Simulation results report that the proposed method yields an average of 1.28% bit rate reduction over the H.264 baseline profile.