Patent ID: 8488673

Claim:
A Rate Distortion Optimization (RDO) apparatus of a video encoder comprising: a source input communication with at least one RDO engine, said source input adapted to provide macroblock source data; and a best macroblock mode decision unit, wherein the at least one RDO engine comprises a 4×4 intra RDO engine adapted to: re-order processing of a sequence of 4×4 blocks of pixels received for processing by the RDO apparatus, a received order of the 4×4 blocks of pixels corresponding to a location of the 4×4 blocks of pixels within a macroblock; and process a re-ordered sequence of 4×4 blocks in the RDO apparatus; wherein the re-order of the processing of the 4×4 blocks of pixels comprises interleaving processing of two upper 4×4 blocks of pixels of a current 8×8 block with processing of two lower 4×4 blocks of pixels of a previous 8×8 block.