This paper proposes a feature extraction algorithm for the block edge pattern from H. 264 I-frame bit streams and verifies the extracted features by image retrieval applications. In the proposed algorithm, five block edge patterns are extracted based on the intra prediction mode and the prediction coefficients from H. 264 bit streams, which accord with the edge descriptor in MPEG-7 and are suitable for content-based image retrieval algorithms. Experimental results show that the image retrieval based on the extracted features is relatively precise, and the average precision is 5.07% higher than that of the retrieval based only on the texture descriptor of intra prediction mode.