Due to the high complexity of intra encoding in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), an efficient intra encoding algorithm combining coding unit segmentation and intra mode selection based on texture feature was proposed. The strength of dominant direction of each depth layer was used to decide whether the Coding Unit (CU) need segmentation, and to reduce the number of intra modes. Firstly, the variance of pixels was used in the coding unit, and the strength of dominant direction based on pixel units to was calculated determine its texture direction complexity, and the final depth was derived by means of the strategy of threshold. Secondly, the relation of vertical complexity and horizontal complexity and the probability of selected intra model were used to choose a subset of prediction modes, and the encoding complexity was further reduced. Compared to HM15.0, the proposed algorithm saves 51.997% encoding time on average, while the Bjontegaard Delta Peak Signal-to-Noise Rate (BDPSNR) only decreases by 0.059 dB and the Bjontegaard Delta Bit Rate (BDBR) increases by 1.018%. The experimental results show that the method can reduce the encoding complexity in the premise of negligible RD performance loss, which is beneficial to real-time video applications of HEVC standard.