Complexity-constrained H.264 HD video coding through mode ranking

Video compression is a computation-intensive task and real-time implementation of state-of-the-art video standards is a challenge. In this paper we propose a complexity scalable framework to H.264/AVC prediction module since the ldquointrardquo and ldquointerrdquo prediction steps are responsible for almost all computation complexity. The idea is to employ a subset of prediction modes instead of testing all modes recommended by H.264/AVC standard. Only the most ldquopopularrdquo prediction modes are ranked and tested until reaching a complexity budget. The ranking is done by sampling macroblocks of previous frames. Results show a negligible the quality loss while achieving large computational savings.