Abstract: Intra prediction is an important part of H.264/AVC.The reference program from JVT（Joint Video Team） uses the full search algorithm for intra prediction which is an algorithm with high complexity and not fit for real-time video.Therefore a new fast intra prediction algorithm using template and threshold is proposed.Experimental results show that the proposed methods can reduce encoding time by 42% on average with less performance degradation and bit-rate increase.