Scalable video encoder/decoder with drift control

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9313511-B2
Application number	US-91776910-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 2, 2010
Priority date	Nov 22, 2000
Publication date	Apr 12, 2016
Grant date	Apr 12, 2016

Abstract

A system, method and computer-readable media are introduced that relate to data coding and decoding. A computing device encodes received data such as video data into a base layer of compressed video and an enhancement layer of compressed video. The computing device controls drift introduced into the base layer of the compressed video. The computing device, such as a scalable video coder, allows drift by predicting the base layer from the enhancement layer information. The amount of drift is managed to improve overall compression efficiency.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A decoder comprising:
a processor; and
a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving a coarse error prediction based on base layer information of data to be decoded and based on a macroblock type of the base layer information, the base layer information comprising motion vectors;
receiving a first fine error prediction based on enhancement layer information, the first fine error prediction associated with a first portion comprising less than all enhancement bits from the data;
receiving a second fine error prediction based on the enhancement layer information, the second fine error prediction associated with a remainder portion of the enhancement bits, wherein the first portion and the remainder portion comprise all of the enhancement bits;
combining the coarse error prediction, the first fine error prediction, and the second fine error prediction according to the motion vectors and the macroblock type, resulting in a prediction; and
generating a decoded video stream from the data by applying the prediction to the enhancement bits and base layer bits, such that errors in the enhancement layer are propagated to the base layer information based on the prediction and the macroblock type.

2. The decoder of claim 1 , wherein the coarse error prediction and fine error prediction are received from a coarse motion-compensated frame memory and a fine motion-compensated frame memory respectively.

3. The decoder of claim 1 , wherein combining the coarse error prediction and fine error prediction reduces drift in accordance with the macroblock type information.

4. The decoder of claim 1 , wherein combining the coarse error prediction and fine error prediction eliminates drift in accordance with the macroblock type information.

5. The decoder of claim 1 , wherein combining the coarse error prediction and fine error prediction allows drift in accordance with the macroblock type information.

6. The decoder of claim 1 , wherein the fine error prediction further depends on the base layer information.

7. A method comprising:
receiving a coarse error prediction based on base layer information of data to be decoded and based on a macroblock type of the base layer information, the base layer information comprising motion vectors;
receiving a first fine error prediction based on enhancement layer information, the first fine error prediction associated with a first portion comprising less than all enhancement bits from the data;
receiving a second fine error prediction based on the enhancement layer information, the second fine error prediction associated with a remainder portion of the enhancement bits, wherein the first portion and the remainder portion comprise all of the enhancement bits;
combining the coarse error prediction, the first fine error prediction, and the second fine error prediction according to the motion vectors and the macroblock type, resulting in a prediction; and

generating a decoded video stream from the data by applying the prediction to the enhancement bits and base layer bits, such that errors in the enhancement layer are propagated to the base layer information based on the prediction and the macroblock type.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the combining of the coarse error prediction and the fine error prediction comprises averaging the coarse error prediction and the fine error prediction.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the coarse error prediction and the fine error prediction are received from a coarse motion-compensated frame memory and a fine motion-compensated frame memory respectively.

10. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:
outputting the decoded video stream.

11. A decoder comprising:
a processor; and
a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving a coarse prediction based on base layer information, the base layer information comprising base bits and control information, the control information comprising motion vectors and a macroblock type of the base bits;
receiving a first fine error prediction based on enhancement layer information, the first fine error prediction associated with a first portion comprising less than all enhancement bits from the data;
receiving a second fine error prediction based on the enhancement layer information, the second fine error prediction associated with a remainder portion of the enhancement bits, wherein the first portion and the remainder portion comprise all of the enhancement bits; and
generating drift compensation values for the enhancement bits and the base bits by:
when the control information indicates a first drift management option, configuring the drift compensation values to eliminate drift according to the coarse prediction;
when the control information indicates a second drift management option, configuring the drift compensation values to allow drift according to the fine prediction, such that errors in an enhancement layer are propagated to the base layer information based on the prediction and the macroblock type; and
when the control information indicates a third drift management option, configuring the drift compensation values to reduce drift based on the coarse prediction and the fine prediction.

12. The decoder of claim 11 , wherein the third drift management option comprises averaging the coarse prediction and the fine prediction.

13. The decoder of claim 11 , wherein the course coarse error prediction and the fine error prediction are received from a coarse motion-compensated frame memory and a fine motion-compensated frame memory respectively.

14. The decoder of claim 11 , the computer-readable storage medium having additional instructions stored which result in operations comprising:
outputting a decoded output video stream based on decoding a received video input stream using the fine error prediction, the coarse error prediction, the drift compensation values, and the control information.

Assignees

• Reibman Amy Ruth
• Bottou Leon
• Basso Andrea
• At & T Ip Ii Lp

Inventors

• Reibman Amy Ruth
• Bottou Leon
• Basso Andrea

Classifications

• H04N19/36

  Scalability techniques involving formatting the layers as a function of picture distortion after decoding, e.g. signal-to-noise [SNR] scalability · CPC title

• H04N19/91

  Entropy coding, e.g. variable length coding [VLC] or arithmetic coding · CPC title

• H04N19/147

  according to rate distortion criteria (rate-distortion as a criterion for motion estimation H04N19/567) · CPC title

• H04N19/19 Primary

  using optimisation based on Lagrange multipliers · CPC title

• H04N19/18

  the unit being a set of transform coefficients · CPC title