A problem associated with vector quantization(VQ) is the computational complexity incurred in searching for a codevector with the closet to a given input vector, where the complexity increases exponentionally with proportion to codebook size and then limits practical application. In this paper, a simple and fast, but efficient, VQ encoding algorithm is presented using a reference codevector as start codevector of premature exit condition, which eliminates distance claculation of unlikely codevectors. The algorithm is to find reference codevector having the possibility to be the nearest vector to input vector first and then to incorporate premature exit condition. The proposed algorithm needs only 10~15% of mathematical operations compared with the conventional full search VQ. Algorithm the number of additions and comparsions of the proposed algorithm is not reduced greatly, the number of multiplication is reduced up to 70~80% compared with other fast VQ encoding methods.