Hybrid video coding is known for a long time and is applied in all video coding standards such as MPEG-x or H.26x. This paper shows that there is still enough potential for further coding efficiency improvements. The paper starts with an overview of state-of-the-art hybrid video coding schemes such as H.264/AVC. Thereafter, our advances on main building blocks of H.264/AVC are presented that significantly improve the coding efficiency. For instance, intra prediction is improved by changing scan directions and thus providing better reference pixels for specific prediction directions. Adaptive filtering and high precision motion compensation improves the motion compensated prediction. Furthermore, the combination of transformation, quantization, and entropy coding of the prediction error is improved using an advanced frequency selective coding technique. With the transmission of post-filter hints it is possible to design a Wiener post-filter that significantly enhances the picture quality. Finally, texture synthesis techniques are used to improve the subjective quality for specific textures with homogenous statistical characteristics. This paper presents our above-mentioned techniques in detail. Depending on the input sequence and the bit rate, the objective and/or subjective gains compared to H.264/AVC are quite significant.

Date Published: 29 January 2007
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 6508, Visual Communications and Image Processing 2007, 650812 (29 January 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.713078

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6508:
Visual Communications and Image Processing 2007
Chang Wen Chen; Dan Schonfeld; Jiebo Luo, Editor(s)