The Design of Adaptive Quantizer to Improve Image Quality of the H.263

H.263의 화질 개선을 위한 적응 양자화기 설계

  • 신경철 (경남정보대학 전자정보과) ;
  • 이광형 (숭실대학교 정보통신전자공학부)
  • Published : 1999.08.01

Abstract

H.263 is an international standard of ITU-T that can makes the service such as video phone, video conference in the transmission line less than 64Kbps. This recommendation draft has used motion estimation/compensation, transform coding and quantizing methods. TMN5 used for the performance estimation of H.263 has fundamentally used DCT in transform coding method and presented quantizer for quantizing the DCT transform coefficient. This paper is presenting adaptive quantizer effectively able to quantize DCT coefficient considering the human visual sensitivity while the structure of TMN5 is maintaining. As quantizer that proposed DCT-based H.263 could make transmit more frame than TMN5 in a same transfer speed, it could lower the frame drop effect. And the luminance signal appeared the difference of -0.3 ~ +0.7dB in the average PSNR for the estimation of objective image quality and the chrominance signal appeared the improvement in about 1.5dB in comparision with TMN5. As a result it can attain the better image quality compared to TMN5 in the estimation of subjective image quality.

H.263은 영상전화, 영상회의 등의 서비스를 64Kbps 이하 전송로에서 가능하게 하는 ITU-T의 국제 표준이다. 이 권고안에서는 움직임 추정/보상, 변환 부호화, 양자화방법을 기본으로 사용하고 있다. H.263의 성능평가에 사용된 TMN5는 변환부호화 방법으로 DCT를 사용하고, DCT 변환계수를 양자화하기 위한 양자화기가 제시되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 TMN5의 구조를 그대로 유지하면서 인간 시각 특성을 고려하여 DCT 계수를 효과적으로 양자화할 수 있는 적응 양자화기를 제안한다. 제안된 DCT 기반 H.263의 양자화기는 같은 전송 속도에서 TMN5보다 더 많은 프레임을 전송 처리함으로 화면 드롭현상을 줄일 수 있었다. 또한 객관적 화질 평가를 위한 평균 PSNR에서 TMN5보다 휘도 신호는 -0.3 ~ +0.7dB의 차이를 보이고 색차 신호에서는 1.5dB 정도의 개선을 나타냈다. 결과적으로 주관적 화질평가에서는 TMN5에 비하여 더욱 선명한 화질의 영상을 얻을 수 있었다.

Keywords

References

  1. ITU-T Recommendation H.263 Video Coding for Low Bit Rate Communication
  2. ITU-T Recommendation H.263(Version 2) Video Coding for Low Bit Rate Communication
  3. ITU-T Recommendation H.261 Video Codec for Audiovisual Services at P X 64 Kbits
  4. ITU-T SG 15 Working Party 15/1 Expert's Group on Very Low Bit rate Visual Telephony, Video Codec Test Model TMN3
  5. ITU-T SG 15 Working Party 15/1 Expert's Group on Very Low Bit rate Visual Telephony, Video Codec Test Model TMN5
  6. Techniques and Standards of Image, Video, and Audio Coding K. R. Rao;J. J. Hwang
  7. ISO/IEC JTCI 10918-1} ITU-T Rec. T.81 Information Technology-Digital Compression and Coding of continuous-tone Still Images : Requirement and Guidelines
  8. IEEE Trans. Signal Process. v.39 A New Two-Dimensional Fast Cosine Transform Algorithm S. C. Chan;K. L. Ho
  9. IEEE Trans. Circuits Systems v.38 Fast Algorithm and Implementation fo 2D Discrete Cosine Transform N. I. Cho;S. U. Lee
  10. Proc. of SPIE Conf, Visual Commun. and Image Processing v.2308 Wavelet Transforms in a JPEG-like Image Coder R. de Queiroz;C. Choi;Y. Huh;J. Hwang;K. R. Rao
  11. IEEE Trans. Circuits and System for Video Technology v.1 Image Coding Using a Classified DCT/VQ based on Two Channel Conjugate Vector Quantization J. Y. Nam;K. R. Rao
  12. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology v.7 Wavelet Transforms in a JPEG-Like Image Coder R. de Queiroz;C. K. Choi;Young Huh;K. R. Rao