In the scalable video coding standard, inter-layer prediction based on the coding information of the base layer was adopted to increase the coding performance. This prediction tool results in new syntax elements called motion_prediction_flag (mPF) and residul_prediction_flag(rPF), which are carried to notify the motion vector predictor (MVP) and reference block required in the motion compensation of the decoder. In this paper, an efficient coding method for mPF is proposed to enhance coding efficiency of the salable video coding standard. Through an analysis on the transmission of mPF based on the relationship between the MVPs, we discover the conditions where mPF is unnecessary at the decoder and suggest a modified rate-distortion (RD) cost function to make RD optimization more effective. Simulation results show that the proposed method offers BD rate savings of approximately 1.4%, compared with the conventional SVC standard.