Chapter 1: Invited Addresses and Tutorials on Signals, Coding,
  Systems and Intelligent Techniques

Title: Efficient gradient-based mode selection for intra4x4 coding in H.264/AVC

Author(s): J. C. Pujol-Alcolado, A. Martin-Navas, M. de-Frutos, F. Diaz-de-Maria

Address: Department of Signal Processing and Communications Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain | Department of Signal Processing and Communications Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain | Department of Signal Processing and Communications Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain | Department of Signal Processing and Communications Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

Reference: 12th International Workshop on Systems, Signals and Image Processing pp. 339 - 343

Abstract/Summary: The H.264/AVC standard offers new tools for achieving higher compression factors than preceding standards. One of these tools is the intra 4x4 predictive coding, which allows predicting a block using nine spatial modes. A full search approach leads to an optimum solution in terms of rate-distortion; however, it can be computationally very expensive. A very efficient algorithm for Intra4x4 coding is proposed, based on selecting a reduced number of modes by means of a gradient filtering and an undemanding post-processing. The results show that our method achieves a performance very close to FS in terms of quality and bit-rate, while reducing the coding time up to a factor of 2.5.

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