Fast CABAC rate estimation for H.264/AVC mode decision

Proposed is a fast context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) rate estimation method which can reduce the computational complexity of rate calculation for mode decision. The time-consuming CABAC rate calculation for mode decision is simplified by using a proposed look-up table indexed only by the probability state index and the most probable symbol. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is very effective in simplifying the binary arithmetic coding process for rate calculation since it achieves run-time saving of about 19.56% (up to 23.80%) with no degradation compared to the conventional method.