Fast reference frame selection algorithm for H.264/AVC based on reference frame map

The variable block size motion estimation (ME) and compensation (MC) using multi-reference frames is adopted in H.264/AVC to improve coding efficiency. However, the computational complexity of the ME/MC increases proportional to the number of reference frames. In this paper, we propose a new efficient reference frame selection algorithm to reduce the complexity. The proposed algorithm selects suitable reference frames by employing the spatial and temporal correlation of video sequence. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm decreases video encoding time while keeping the similar visual quality and bitrates.