Texture refinement framework for improved video coding

Fabien Racapé (1) , Marie Babel (2) , Olivier Déforges (3) , Dominique Thoreau (1) , Jérôme Viéron (1) , Edouard Francois (1)

1 Video Compression Lab - Thomson R&D
2 IETR - Institut d'Electronique et de Télécommunications de Rennes
3 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique

H.264/AVC standard offers an efficient way of reducing the noticeable artefacts of former video coding schemes, but it can be perfectible for the coding of detailed texture areas. This paper presents a conceptual coding framework, utilizing visual perception redundancy, which aims at improving both bit-rate and quality on textured areas. The approach is generic and can be integrated into usual coding scheme. The proposed scheme is divided into three steps: a first algorithm analyses texture regions, with an eye to build a dictionary of the most representative texture sub-regions (RTS). The encoder preserves then them at a higher quality than the rest of the picture, in order to enable a refinement algorithm to finally spread the preserved information over textured areas. In this paper, we present a first solution to validate the framework, detailing then the encoder side in order to define a simple method for dictionary building. The proposed H.264/AVC compliant scheme creates a dictionary of macroblocks

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Fabien Racapé, Marie Babel, Olivier Déforges, Dominique Thoreau, Jérôme Viéron, et al.. Texture refinement framework for improved video coding. SPIE Visual Information Processing and Communication, Jan 2010, San Jose, United States. pp.1-9, ⟨10.1117/12.838987⟩. ⟨hal-00461952⟩