Fast Mode Decision on the Enhancement Layer in H.264 Scalable Extension

Scalable video coding (SVC) was standardized as an extension of H.264/AVC by the JVT (Joint Video Team) in Nov. 2007, The biggest feature of SVC is multi-layered coding where two or more video sequences are compressed into a single bit-stream. This letter proposes a fast block mode decision algorithm in spatial enhancement layer of SVC. The proposed algorithm achieves early decision by hunting the number of candidate modes for block with certain characteristic called same [notion vector block (SMVB). Our proposed method reduces the complexity, in terms of encoding time by up to 66.17%. Nevertheless, it shows negligible PSNR degradation by only up to 0.16 dB and increases the bit-rate by only up to 0.64%, respectively.