Fast mode decision and motion estimation for H.264 (FMDME)

The H.264 video coding standard achieves highest coding gain. In addition to common tools in previous standards such as H.263 and MPEG4, it supports multiple frames, multiple block sizes, and 1/4 pixel motion estimation, deblocking filter, intra-prediction, and so on. However, full search of for all block modes and reference frames requires heavy computational complexity. The algorithm predictive motion vector field adaptive search technique (PMVFAST) (Tourapis, 2000) was previously accepted into MPEG standard to achieve hundreds of time of speed up. FMBME (Chang, 2004), and some other algorithms (Yanfei Shen, 2004) have been developed to do fast multiple block size motion estimation. For multiple reference frame motion estimation, FMFME (Chang, 2003), and some other algorithms (Xiang Li, 2004) have also been developed. In this paper a new algorithm is presented named as fast mode decision and motion estimation (FMDME). This algorithm achieves high speed up factor by involving fast skip mode checking, fast multiple block size motion estimation, fast multiple reference frame selection, fast motion estimation, and fast intra-block skipping for P frame in H.264