Abstract
The compression of video for both full HD and UHD requires the inclusion of extra vertical lines to every video frame, named as the DTV essential hidden area (DEHA), for the effective functioning of the MPEG-2/4/H encoder, stream, and decoder. However, while the encoding/decoding process is dependent on the DEHA, the DEHA is conventionally viewed as a redundancy in terms of channel utilization or storage efficiency. This paper proposes a block mode DEHA method to more effectively utilize the DEHA. Partitioning video block images and then evenly filling the representative DEHA macroblocks with the average DC coefficient of the active video macroblock can minimize the amount of DEHA data entering the compressed video stream. Theoretically, this process results in smaller DEHA data entering the video stream. Experimental testing of the proposed block mode DEHA method revealed a slight improvement in the quality of the active video. Outside of this technological improvement to video quality, the attractiveness of the proposed DEHA method is also heightened by the ease that it can be implemented with existing video encoders.
