Abstract: The multi-reference frames technique is employed in H.264/AVC,which ameliorates video quality greatly,but also increases the complexity of coding．In order to avoid searching redundant reference frame and increase the efficiency of the H.264encoder,a fast multi-reference frames selection algorithm was proposed according to the temporal correlation between inter frames,and the temporal and spatial correlation among the adjacent macro blocks.The number of reference frames was determimed according to the degree of the temporal correlation between inter frames,and the coding mode and the best reference frame of the current macro block were detemined by the degree of temporal and spatial correlation between its adjacent macro blocks adaptively．Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can save about 60% of encoding time with the encoding quality almost unchanged in comparison with JM16.2.

Key words: H.264/AVC,Multiple reference frame selection,Interframe temporal correlation,Macro block temporal and spatial correlation