The present invention generally relates to a method for predicting a block of pixels from at least one patch comprising a block of pixels and a causal neighborhood around this block of pixels. The method comprises the following steps: determining a mapping of a causal neighborhood, around that block of pixels to be predicted, on the block of pixels to be predicted in order that the block of pixels of each patch is best predicted by mapping the neighborhood of that patch on the block of pixels of that patch, and predicting the block of pixels from a prediction block computed by applying the determined mapping on the neighborhood of the block of pixels to predict.

The usual coding order according to which the reference view is coded prior to the dependent view, and within each view, a depth map is coded subsequent to the respective picture, may be maintained and does lead to a sacrifice of efficiency in performing inter-view redundancy removal by, for example, predicting motion data of the current picture of the dependent view from motion data of the current picture of the reference view. Rather, a depth map estimate of the current picture of the dependent view is obtained by warping the depth map of the current picture of the reference view into the dependent view, thereby enabling various methods of inter-view redundancy reduction more efficiently by bridging the gap between the views. According to another aspect, the following discovery is exploited: the overhead associated with an enlarged list of motion predictor candidates for a block of a picture of a dependent view is comparatively low compared to a gain in motion vector prediction quality resulting from an adding of a motion vector candidate which is determined from an, in disparity-compensated sense, co-located block of a reference view.

The usual coding order according to which the reference view is coded prior to the dependent view, and within each view, a depth map is coded subsequent to the respective picture, may be maintained and does lead to a sacrifice of efficiency in performing inter-view redundancy removal by, for example, predicting motion data of the current picture of the dependent view from motion data of the current picture of the reference view. Rather, a depth map estimate of the current picture of the dependent view is obtained by warping the depth map of the current picture of the reference view into the dependent view, thereby enabling various methods of inter-view redundancy reduction more efficiently by bridging the gap between the views. According to another aspect, the following discovery is exploited: the overhead associated with an enlarged list of motion predictor candidates for a block of a picture of a dependent view is comparatively low compared to a gain in motion vector prediction quality resulting from an adding of a motion vector candidate which is determined from an, in disparity-compensated sense, co-located block of a reference view.

A method of encoding digital video data corresponding to a sequence of input video frames is disclosed. The input video frames are encoded into a sequence of output video frames. The method comprises encoding a first input video frame in a first encoder instance using intra-frame encoding to produce a first intra-frame, decoding the first intra-frame to produce a first decoded frame, encoding the first decoded frame in a second encoder instance to produce a first output video frame. A digital video encoding system is also disclosed, as well as a camera comprising such a system, and a computer program product for performing the method.

The disclosed invention is a enhancement to the Video Encoder component of the MPEG standard to improve both the efficiency and quality of the video presentation at the display device. The inventions described below pertain to the enhancement of video compression technology. In general, they are compatible with MPEG video standards (as in current art), but represent novel enhancements thereof. The above inventions apply to several transmission media and networks including cable, DSL, wireless, satellite and IP networks. Another category of invention in this disclosure enhances networking performance by recognizing that the transmitted information is video, rather than data. This invention can be scaled to other classes of multimedia data such as speech or audio or images.

The disclosed invention is a enhancement to the Video Encoder component of the MPEG standard to improve both the efficiency and quality of the video presentation at the display device. The inventions described below pertain to the enhancement of video compression technology. In general, they are compatible with MPEG video standards (as in current art), but represent novel enhancements thereof. The above inventions apply to several transmission media and networks including cable, DSL, wireless, satellite and IP networks. Another category of invention in this disclosure enhances networking performance by recognizing that the transmitted information is video, rather than data. This invention can be scaled to other classes of multimedia data such as speech or audio or images.

A hardware video processor comprises a cost calculation unit. The cost calculation unit is configured to determine rate distortion costs of a plurality of different modes for a portion of a video. The hardware video processor further comprises an evaluation unit. The evaluation unit is configured to receive the rate distortion costs of the plurality of different modes. At least one component of at least one of the rate distortion costs is adjusted based on a condition to determine at least one modified rate distortion cost of at least one of the plurality of different modes. The at least one modified rate distortion cost is used to evaluate the plurality of different modes and select one of the modes for use in encoding the portion of the video.

A video fidelity measure is determined for a video sequence (1) by determining distorted and original difference pictures (30, 40) as pixel-wise differences between pixels (14, 24) in a distorted picture (10) and corresponding pixels (24) in an original picture (20) and between pixels in a preceding distorted picture (11) and corresponding pixels in a preceding original picture (21). First and second maps representing distortions in pixel values between the distorted and original pictures (10, 20) turd between distorted and original difference pictures (30, 40) are determined. Third and sixth maps are determined as respective aggregations of local variabilities in pixels values in the distorted and original pictures (10, 20) and local variabilities in pixels values in the distorted and original difference pictures (30, 40), respectively. The video fidelity measure is then determined based on the first to third and sixth maps.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for performing efficient video compression are disclosed. A video processing system includes a transmitter sending a video stream over a wireless link to a receiver. The transmitter includes a processor and an encoder. The processor generates rendered blocks of pixels of a video frame, and when the processor predicts a compression level for a given region of the video frame is different from a compression level for immediately neighboring blocks, the processor generates side information. The side information identifies a location of the given region in the video frame and a type of content that causes the compression level differences. The processor sends the rendered video information and the side information as accompanying metadata to the encoder. The encoder updates encoding parameters based on the received side information, and compresses the rendered given region based on the updated encoding parameters.

Disclosed is a method of encoding a video sequence according to a first set of encoding parameters is presented, including redimensioning the video sequence, generating encoding data of the redimensioned video sequence according to a second set of encoding parameters, determining first encoding data of the video sequence by respective scale transposition of encoded data generated for the redimensioned video sequence, determining, for at least one encoding block of an image of the video sequence, respective pixel residuals from predictive coding data obtained by encoding the redimensioned video sequence applying a block transformation to the pixel residuals determined, and inserting the transformed pixel residuals and the first encoding data into a binary encoding stream of the video sequence.