Treating non-zero quantized transform coefficients as zeros during video compression processing
US6263021A · kind A · utility
Assignees
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 4, 1999 |
| Grant date | Jul 17, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 4, 2019 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04N19/895
- WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
During video coding, a transform such as a discrete cosine transform (DCT) is applied to blocks of image data (e.g., motion-compensated interframe pixel differences) and the resulting transform coefficients for each block are quantized at a specified quantization level. Notwithstanding the fact that some coefficients are quantized to non-zero values, at least one non-zero quantized coefficient is treated as if it had a value of zero for purposes of further processing (e.g., run-length encoding (RLE) the quantized data). When segmentation analysis is performed to identify two or more different regions of interest in each frame, the number of coefficients that are treated as having a value of zero for RLE is different for different regions of interest (e.g., more coefficients for less-important regions). In this way, the number of bits used to encode image data are reduced to satisfy bit rate requirements without (1) having to drop frames adaptively, while (2) conforming to constraints that may be imposed on the magnitude of change in quantization level from frame to frame.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.