Richardson I.E.G. Video Codec Design. Developing Image and Video Compression Systems

Издательство John Wiley, 2002, -304 pp.The subject of this book is the compression (‘coding’) of digital images and video. Within the last 5-10 years, image and video coding have gone from being relatively esoteric research subjects with few ‘real’ applications to become key technologies for a wide range of mass-market applications, from personal computers to television.
Like many other recent technological developments, the emergence of video and image coding in the mass market is due to convergence of a number of areas. Cheap and powerful processors, fast network access, the ubiquitous Internet and a large-scale research and standardisation effort have all contributed to the development of image and video coding technologies. Coding has enabled a host of new ‘multimedia’ applications including digital television, digital versatile disk (DVD) movies, streaming Internet video, home digital photography and video conferencing.
Compression coding bridges a crucial gap in each of these applications: the gap between the user’s demands (high-quality still and moving images, delivered quickly at a reasonable cost) and the limited capabilities of transmission networks and storage devices. For example, a ‘television-quality’ digital video signal requires 216Mbits of storage or transmission capacity for one second of video. Transmission of this type of signal in real time is beyond the capabilities of most present-day communications networks. A 2-hour movie (uncompressed) requires over 194 Gbytes of storage, equivalent to 42 DVDs or 304 CD-ROMs. In order for digital video to become a plausible alternative to its analogue predecessors (analogue television or VHS videotape), it has been necessary to develop methods of reducing or compressing this prohibitively high bit-rate signal.
The drive to solve this problem has taken several decades and massive efforts in research, development and standardisation (and work continues to improve existing methods and develop new coding paradigms). However, efficient compression methods are now a firmly established component of the new digital media technologies such as digital television and DVD-video. A welcome side effect of these developments is that video and image compression has enabled many novel visual communication applications that would not have previously been possible. Some areas have taken off more quickly than others (for example, the long-predicted boom in video conferencing has yet to appear), but there is no doubt that visual compression is here to stay. Every new PC has a number of designed-in features specifically to support and accelerate video compression algorithms. Most developed nations have a timetable for stopping the transmission of analogue television, after which all television receivers will need compression technology to decode and display TV images. VHS videotapes are finally being replaced by DVDs which can be played back on DVD players or on PCs. The heart of all of these applications is the video compressor and decompressor; or enCOder/DECoder; or video CODEC.Digital Video
Image and Video Compression Fundamentals
Video Coding Standards: JPEG and MPEG
Video Coding Standards: H.261, H.263 and H.26L
Motion Estimation and Compensation
Transform Coding
Entropy Coding
Pre- and Post-processing
Rate. Distortion and Complexity
Transmission of Coded Video
Platforms
Video CODEC Design
Future Developments