Intra coding in H.264/AVC can significantly improve the compression efficiency but at the cost of high computational complexity.To reduce the complexity

this paper presents a fast intra prediction algorithm including block type decision and candidate modes decision based on the texture detection of 4x4 blocks.After the texture feature of every 4x4 subblock in a macroblock by template matching is achieved

the proper block type is firstly chosen based on the deviation of subblocksedge strengths among a macrock Then for the chosen block type

the candidate modes are further decided based on the edge direction of current blocks.Experimental results show that the proposed fast algorithm can achieve 74% time saving on average for encoding the all intra-frame sequence with little loss of coding performance with the reference software.