A Fast Mode Decision Method in HEVC Using Adaptive Ordering of Modes

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) has brought significant improvement to video compression in terms of coding performance and subjective quality. However, it is computationally more complex than H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and, hence, adaptation of HEVC to real-time video services has not been promising. In order to reduce the computational cost, we propose a fast mode decision method that is based on the adaptive ordering of modes. Our experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the total encoding time by 47.27%-60.73% and 47.65%-61.31%, with negligible degradation of coding performance, which is a Bjøntegaard delta rate increment of 0.35%-1.04% and 0.64%-1.80% under random-access configuration and low-delay configuration, respectively, compared with HEVC test model 12.1 with fast mode off.