In this paper, a multihypothesis prediction scheme for inter frame video coding is proposed. Using a template matching algorithm, motion vectors are derived at the decoder side instead of explicitly coding the motion vectors into the bitstream. Therefore, higher numbers of hypotheses can be used in the averaging process at no additional coding cost. The proposed scheme has been implemented into the H.264/AVC reference software. Simulation results show bitrate reductions compared to H.264/AVC of 7.7% on average for the tested video sequences. It is shown that part of the performance gain is due to rounding effects in H.264/AVC sub-pixel interpolation which can be exploited in the averaging calculation of the proposed multihypothesis prediction. Experiments with an improved interpolation filter for both reference scheme and the proposed scheme still yield bitrate reductions of 4.7% on average.

Date Published: 19 January 2009
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7257, Visual Communications and Image Processing 2009, 725704 (19 January 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.805923

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7257:
Visual Communications and Image Processing 2009
Majid Rabbani; Robert L. Stevenson, Editor(s)