Abstract: There is a simple and effective rapid implementation which is called zero block detection method existing in the video coding schemes based on motion estimation and prediction. H.264/AVC is a video coding scheme based on motion estimation and prediction, so the encoding time can be decreased by using the zero-block detection method. According to the new characteristics of H.264/AVC, the threshold for zero-block detection is induced and a new zero-block detection method is proposed in this paper. Experimental results illustrate that this new zero-block detection method decreases the encoding time by 20% to 47% without causing great decrease of encoding efficiency under the mid-low bit-rate video encoding.