Modulus quantization for matching-pursuit video coding

Abstract

Overcomplete signal decomposition using matching pursuits has been shown to be an efficient technique for coding motion-residual images in a hybrid video coder. Unlike orthogonal decomposition, matching pursuit uses an in-the-loop modulus quantizer which must be specified before coding begins. This complicates the quantizer design, since the optimal quantizer depends on the statistics of the matching-pursuit coefficients which in turn depend on the in loop quantizer actually used. In this paper, we address the modulus quantizer design issue, specifically developing frame-adaptive quantization schemes for the matching-pursuit video coder. Adaptive dead-zone subtraction is shown to reduce the information content of the modulus source, and a uniform threshhold quantizer is shown to be optimal for the resulting source. Practical two-pass and one-pass algorithms are developed to jointly determine the quantizer parameters and the number of coded basis functions in order to minimize coding distortion for a given rate. The compromise one-pass scheme performs nearly as well as the full two-pass algorithm, but with the same complexity as a fixed-quantizer design. The adaptive schemes are shown to outperform the fixed quantizer used in earlier works, especially at high bit rates, where the gain is as high as 1.7 dB.