Context-adaptive mode selection for intra-block coding in H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10

A new mode selection method for intra-block coding in the H.264/MPEG-4 part 10 video-coding standard is proposed. There are nine 4×4 and four 16×16 intra-prediction modes for intra-block coding. Thus, to find the best intra-block coding mode for a 16×16 macroblock, all of the 144 (16×9) 4×4 and four 16×16 intra-modes need to be exhaustively computed and evaluated. We propose a context-based intra-mode selection method, which uses neighbors' mode information to alleviate this large computational burden. We have experimented the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm under various conditions.