Compression of superhigh-definition multimedia images
John A. Robinson · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1996
Applications of super-high-definition (SHD) television are likely to require fast coding and decoding of large, full-color, multimedia images, typically with stills and videos embedded in graphical surrounds. Binary tree predictive coding (BTPC) efficiently codes both photographs and graphics, and is therefore suitable as a general-purpose multimedia compressor. It codes successive 'bands' of error difference signals which progressively refine image predictions. This paper reports the design of a new predictor for BTPC which improves performance on graphics without significantly affecting the coding of photographs. At each point the predictor uses local luminance surface shape to choose a combination of surrounding points to form the prediction. Shapes which are suggestive of graphics are handled differently than those suggestive of photographs. The new BTPC approach is compared with the JPEG standard and with a state-of-the-art embedded zerotree wavelet coder. Though falling between the standard and the state-of-the-art for compressing pure photographic imagery, BTPC is superior to both for multimedia image coding. It is also much faster than the embedded coder.