Realize Real-Time Encoding Of The H.264/AVC On DM642

H.264/AVC is newest video coding standard of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. H.264 can save approximately a 50% bit rate for equivalent perceptual quality relative to the existing standards. Due to the advanced compression performance and the "network friendly" nature, H.264 are adopted over a broad variety of applications such as video conference, video watch, IPTV, storage and so on.At 600MHz and 4800MIPS, the new generation DSP TI DM642 digital media processor offers industry-leading performance. The processor, which is integrated multimedia and network peripheral interfaces, reduces system cost for multimedia applications. So, DM642 is an ideal platform for multimedia applications.There are many new technologies used in the codec, including Intra prediction, Variable block-sized motion estimation, Multi-reference-picture motion-compensated prediction, Quarter-sample-accurate motion compensation, Integer DCT transform, CAVLC for entropy encoding, etc. All these new technologies and their algorithms will be discussed in this paper. Through deeply studying the main technologies and algorithms, find out the shortage of those key encoding modules and the bottlenecks which influence the encoding speed, furthermore, according to the experts'experience knowledge from a lot of experiments, that the motion-estimation always occupies a very large percentage in the whole encoding procedure, a improved block matching algorithm and a improved inter mode select algorithm are proposed to improve the code efficiency. Finally the improved encoding algorithm is transplanted to the DM642 DSP chip, and after the C program and assembly level optimization according to the chip's feature, the real-time encoding of the baseline profile is realized in the end.