Bit rate estimation for cost function of 4×4 intra mode decision of H.264/AVC

H. 264/AVC is a newest international video coding standard that can achieve considerably higher coding efficiency than previous standards. This comes at the cost of the complex mode decision procedure using the rate-distortion optimization, which makes real-time encoding difficult. To reduce the complexity of rate-distortion cost, we propose a bit rate estimation technique to avoid the entropy coding method during mode decision of intra prediction. The estimation method is based on the properties of contextbased variable length coding (CAVLC). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed estimation method achieves up to 53 % reduced encoding time of intra coding with ignorable degradation of coding performance. © 2007 IEEE.