Alpha coding of arbitrarily shaped objects for low-bit-rate MPEG-4

Ofer Hadar; Hagai Folkman

doi:10.1117/12.448198

12 November 2001 Alpha coding of arbitrarily shaped objects for low-bit-rate MPEG-4

Ofer Hadar, Hagai Folkman

Proceedings Volume 4518, Multimedia Systems and Applications IV; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.448198
Event: ITCom 2001: International Symposium on the Convergence of IT and Communications, 2001, Denver, CO, United States

Abstract

This paper presents a new scheme for compact shape-coding which can reduce the needed bandwidth for low bit rate MPEG- 4 applications. Our scheme is based on a coarse representation of the alpha plane with a block size resolution of 8x8 pixels. This arrangement saves bandwidth and reduces the algorithm complexity (number of computations), as compared to the Content-based Arithmetic Encoding (CAE) algorithm. In our algorithm, we encode the alpha plane of a macroblock with only 4 bits, while we can further reduce the number of encoding bits by using the Huffman code. The encoding blocks are only contour macroblocks, transparent macroblocks are considered as background macroblocks, while opaque macroblocks are considered as object macroblocks. We show that the amount of bandwidth saving with representing the alpha-plane can reach a factor of 9.5. Such a scheme is appropriate for mobile applications where there is a lack of both bandwidth and processing power. We also speculate that our scheme will be compatible to the MPEG-4 standard.

Citation Download Citation

Ofer Hadar and Hagai Folkman "Alpha coding of arbitrarily shaped objects for low-bit-rate MPEG-4", Proc. SPIE 4518, Multimedia Systems and Applications IV, (12 November 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.448198

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