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Fast reference frame and inter-mode selection method for H.264/AVC

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Abstract

This paper presents an efficient method for selecting the best reference frame (RF) and the best inter-mode in H.264/AVC. The proposed method employs a different examination order compared to conventional methods and examines the most important RF for all inter-modes in the first step. Then, in the second step, it further examines the best mode from the first step for all available RFs. Finally, in the third step, it additionally examines the remaining modes for the best RF determined in the second step. Based on the intermediate results after the first and second steps, the proposed method skips many less important RFs in each inter-mode and significantly reduces the coding complexity. However, the proposed method also shows very good performance in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio and bit rate, as it does not skip important RFs in each inter-mode. Simulation results show that the proposed method greatly reduces the encoding time while significantly improving the encoding performance of conventional methods.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Chung-Ang University excellent freshman scholarship grants in 2013, by Basic Science Research Program through the NRF of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (No. 2010-0013163), by the MSIP under the ITRC support program (NIPA-2014-H0301-14-1015) supervised by the NIPA, and by the Human Resources Development program (No. 20124030200060) of the KETEP grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 221 HeukSeok-Dong DongJak-Gu, Seoul , 156-756, Korea

    Hyungwook Kim, Sojeong Lim, Namhoon Koo & Sungwook Yu

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  1. Hyungwook Kim
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  2. Sojeong Lim
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  3. Namhoon Koo
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  4. Sungwook Yu
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Correspondence to Sungwook Yu.

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Kim, H., Lim, S., Koo, N. et al. Fast reference frame and inter-mode selection method for H.264/AVC. SIViP 8, 1087–1093 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0635-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0635-6

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