In this paper, we propose novel hardware architecture for intra 16 × 16 module for the macroblock engine of a new video coding standard H.264. To reduce the cycle of intra prediction 16 × 16, transform/quantization, and inverse quantization/inverse transform of H.264, an advanced method for different operation is proposed. This architecture can process one macroblock in 208 cycles for all cases of macroblock type by processing 4 × 4 Hadamard transform and quantization during 16 × 16 prediction. This module was designed using VHDL Hardware Description Language (HDL) and works with a 160 MHz frequency using ALTERA NIOS-II development board with Stratix II EP2S60F1020C3 FPGA. The system also includes software running on an NIOS-II processor in order to implementing the pre-processing and the post-processing functions. Finally, the execution time of our HW solution is decreased by 26% when compared with the previous work.

The high performance of H.264/AVC video encoder is accompanied with a wide computation complexity especially for high definition (HD) video sequences. One of the major H.264/AVC features to be optimized is the mode decision for both inter and intra prediction. Thus, based on high correlation observed between selected inter prediction mode and intra mode decision, a fast intra mode decision algorithm based on the best inter prediction mode for H264 high definition (HD) baseline profile encoder is proposed. The evaluation of the proposed approach was based on the rate distortion and PSNR variation, execution time and percentage of skipping intra4x4 and intra16x16. The proposed scheme is performed on 720p (1280x720) and 1080p (1920x1088) HD video sequences. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can save up to 60% of intra prediction computation time, 16% of skipping intra16x16 and up to 83% for intra4x4 without inducing PSNR degradation and bit-rate increase. General TermsVideo compression techniques and signal processing Keywords H264/AVC, Fast intra mode decision, High definition, baseline profile.