Abstract: In order to reduce the encoder's complexity, an early direct mode decision for MVC is proposed in this paper. Based on the best modes and their rate-distortion costs of encoded neighboring macroblocks which are located in the spatial, temporal and inter-view directions, the influence factor of neighboring macroblocks is used to describe the current macroblock. By comparing this influence factor with the threshold which is obtained by statistical analysis of error selection probability, the proposed algorithm directly select the direct mode for some macroblocks and ignore the calculation of the other remaining modes. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve 88.2% of encoding time saving on average with little loss of coding performance with the reference full search encoder.