Abstract: A proposed intermediate way of handling the renderable portion of the first view results in more efficient coding. Instead of omitting the coding of the renderable portion completely, even more efficient coding of multi-view signals entails merely suppressing the coding of the residual signal within the renderable portion, whereas the prediction parameter coding still takes place from the non-renderable portion of the multi-view signal across the renderable portion so that prediction parameters for the renderable portion may be exploited for predicting parameters for the non-renderable portion. The additional coding rate for transmitting the prediction parameters for the renderable portion may be kept low as this merely aims at forming a continuation of the parameter history across the renderable portion to serve as a basis for prediction parameters of other portions of the multi-view signal.

Abstract: An encoder for encoding a sequence of symbols is described which has an assigner configured to assign a number of parameters to each symbol of the sequence of symbols based on information contained within previous symbols of the sequence of symbols; a plurality of entropy encoders each of which is configured to convert the symbols forwarded to the respective entropy encoder into a respective bitstream; and a selector configured to forward each symbol to a selected one of the plurality of entropy encoders, the selection depending on the number of parameters assigned to the respective symbol.

Abstract: Rate control mechanisms for video encoding aim to provide the best possible video quality while keeping given conditions on transmission rate and decoding delay. In order to achieve a constant video quality, the anchor and non-anchor frames of different frame types are encoded using a different number of bits. However, since video sequences generally contain widely varying picture content and previously coded frames are used to predict a given frame, a suitable assignment of frame target bit rates is hard to determine, especially for non-anchor frames. According to the invention, non-anchor frames are coded using a fixed quantization parameter. Since the quantization parameter used for the encoding of non-anchor frames is directly derived from the average quantization parameter of the previously encoded anchor frame, such approach ensures a constant video quality.

Abstract: An improved coding efficiency is achieved by giving the encoder the opportunity to change the field/frame-wise treatment of individual picture portions between the first precision-encoded data and the second precision-encoded data, with the second precision being higher than the first precision.

Abstract: Today's video codecs require the intelligent choice between many coding options. This choice can efficiently be done using Lagrangian coder control. But Lagrangian coder control only provides results given a particular Lagrange parameter, which correspond to some unknown transmission rate. On the other hand, rate control algorithms provide coding results at a given bitrate but without the optimization performance of Lagrangian coder control. The combination of rate control and Lagrangian optimization for hybrid video coding is investigated. A new approach is suggested to incorporate these two known methods into the video coder control using macroblock mode decision and quantizer adaptation. The rate-distortion performance of the proposed approach is validated and analyzed via experimental results.

Abstract: Today's video codecs require the intelligent choice between many coding options. This choice can efficiently be done using Lagrangian coder control. But Lagrangian coder control only provides results given a particular Lagrange parameter, which correspond to some unknown transmission rate. On the other hand, rate control algorithms provide coding results at a given bitrate but without the optimization performance of Lagrangian coder control. The combination of rate control and Lagrangian optimization for hybrid video coding is investigated. A new approach is suggested to incorporate these two known methods into the video coder control using macroblock mode decision and quantizer adaptation. The rate-distortion performance of the proposed approach is validated and analyzed via experimental results.

Abstract: An improved coding efficiency is achieved by giving the encoder the opportunity to change the field/frame-wise treatment of individual picture portions between the first precision-encoded data and the second precision-encoded data, with the second precision being higher than the first precision.

Abstract: Rate control mechanisms for video encoding aim to provide the best possible video quality while keeping given conditions on transmission rate and decoding delay. In order to achieve a constant video quality, the anchor and non-anchor frames of different frame types are encoded using a different number of bits. However, since video sequences generally contain widely varying picture content and previously coded frames are used to predict a given frame, a suitable assignment of frame target bit rates is hard to determine, especially for non-anchor frames. According to the invention, non-anchor frames are coded using a fixed quantisation parameter. Since the quantisation parameter used for the encoding of non-anchor frames is directly derived from the average quantisation parameter of the previously encoded anchor frame, such approach ensures a constant video quality.