Fractal Video Research Articles

Review on Fractal Video and Image Compression Techniques

Compression of images process is a step in the image processing. It is concerned with the transmission and storage of digitally created images. Fractal coding is a potential image and video compression approach with good reconstruction fidelity and relatively large compression ratios, because of its simplicity and great performance; fractal image compression (FIC) is a particularly popular approach in image compression applications. However, it has a significant disadvantage in the form of a long encoding time. This is because encoding any small bit necessitates a massive similarity search in the original data As a result; the FIC search time is reduced while the quality of the reconstructed images is maintained acceptable level in many introduced paper and other still a study topic in progress. Fractal images are images that are self-similar in that each individual part is the same as the total. This paper will discusses many attempts for more author that working on image and video compression using fractal compression technique based on various approach and with each discuss focuses on the main parameter of compression such compression ratio (CR), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and encoding time, as well as the details of data set the used for testing also writing with each technique to creating fractal video and image compression. Index Terms— FIC, Video compression, parallel processing, Iteration Function System (IFS), Image processing.

Fractal video compression for IOT-based smart cities applications using motion vector estimation

Recently, Internet of the things (IoTs) devices have been used highly in surveillance applications in smart environments, cities, and buildings. Most of the surveillance data recorded by the IoT devices is in the form of video and needs to be transmitted to the admin or server by video streaming technology. Fractal video compression uses a self-similarity concept for video compression, meaning the fractal image contains self-similarity of itself that is explained and denoted by change. Computational cost is more in fractal video coding; different methods have been developed to reduce this computational cost. The proposed work's main objective is to implement a video streaming approach by combining the Diamond-search-pattern- block-matching motion estimation algorithm and hash-based fractal video compression algorithm to reduce the encoding time. It improves both the delay and security of the block matching system and the developed approach measures based on evaluation parameters: Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), encoding time, decoding time, Mean squared error (MSE), and Compression ratio for Smart City Applications. Compared to other algorithms, the IoTs video data is streamed efficiently in a smart city to analyse the abnormalities.

Digital Video Compression Using DCT-Based Iterated Function System (IFS)

Large video files processing involves a huge volume of data. The codec, storage systems and network needs resource utilization, so it becomes important to minimize the used memory space and time to distribute these videos over the Internet using compression techniques. Fractal image and video compression falls under the category of lossy compression. It gives best results when used for natural images.
 This paper presents an efficient method to compress an AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) file with fractal video compression(FVC). The video first is separated into a sequence of frames that are a color bitmap images, then images are transformed from RGB color space to Luminance/Chrominance components (YIQ) color space; each of these components is compressed alone with Enhanced Partition Iterated Function System (EPIFS), then fractal codes are saved.
 The classical IFS suffers from a very long encoding time that needed to find the best matching for each range block when compared with the domain image blocks. In this work, the (FVC) is enhanced by enhancing the IFS of the fractal image compression using a classification scheme based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Experimentation is performed by considering different block sizes and jump steps to reduce number of the tested domain blocks. Results shows a significant reduction in the encoding time with good quality and high compression ratio for different video files.

Fast Normalized Covariance based Similarity Measure for Fractal Video Compression with Quadtree Partitioning

Fast Normalized Covariance based Similarity Measure for Fractal Video Compression with Quadtree Partitioning

Frame-groups based fractal video compression and its parallel implementation in Hadoop cloud computing environment

Fractal video compression is based on the self-similarity search between range cubes and domain cubes, so it can achieve a high compression ratio. However, its computational complexity is relatively high that restricts its studies and applications. Further studies show that the compression process exhibits a high natural parallelism as there exist data independence when computing the compression codes. In this paper, we utilize parallel processing techniques to implement the fractal video compression algorithm to reduce the run time. There are two main works in this article: firstly, a parallel fractal video compression algorithm based on frame-groups is proposed. Secondly, we implemented the parallel algorithm in Hadoop cloud computing environment. The experiment results show the parallel algorithm has a high speedup and the distributed parallel computing systems can utilize network resources sufficiently to implement high-performance computing, and provide a good practicability and a promising future in application.

Modified Three-Step Search Block Matching Motion Estimation and Weighted Finite Automata based Fractal Video Compression

The major challenge with fractal image/video coding technique is that, it requires more encoding time. Therefore, how to reduce the encoding time is the research component remains in the fractal coding. Block matching motion estimation algorithms are used, to reduce the computations performed in the process of encoding. The objective of the proposed work is to develop an approach for video coding using modified three step search (MTSS) block matching algorithm and weighted finite automata (WFA) coding with a specific focus on reducing the encoding time. The MTSS block matching algorithm are used for computing motion vectors between the two frames i.e. displacement of pixels and WFA is used for the coding as it behaves like the Fractal Coding (FC). WFA represents an image (frame or motion compensated prediction error) based on the idea of fractal that the image has self-similarity in itself. The self-similarity is sought from the symmetry of an image, so the encoding algorithm divides an image into multi-levels of quad-tree segmentations and creates an automaton from the sub-images. The proposed MTSS block matching algorithm is based on the combination of rectangular and hexagonal search pattern and compared with the existing New Three-Step Search (NTSS), Three-Step Search (TSS), and Efficient Three-Step Search (ETSS) block matching estimation algorithm. The performance of the proposed MTSS block matching algorithm is evaluated on the basis of performance evaluation parameters i.e. mean absolute difference (MAD) and average search points required per frame. Mean of absolute difference (MAD) distortion function is used as the block distortion measure (BDM). Finally, developed approaches namely, MTSS and WFA, MTSS and FC, and Plane FC (applied on every frame) are compared with each other. The experimentations are carried out on the standard uncompressed video databases, namely, akiyo, bus, mobile, suzie, traffic, football, soccer, ice etc. Developed approaches are compared on the basis of performance evaluation parameters, namely, encoding time, decoding time, compression ratio and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). The video compression using MTSS and WFA coding performs better than MTSS and fractal coding, and frame by frame fractal coding in terms of achieving reduced encoding time and better quality of video.

Fast Quadtree Based Normalized Cross Correlation Method for Fractal Video Compression using FFT

In order to achieve fast computational speed with good visual quality of output video, we propose a frequency domain based new fractal video compression scheme. Normalized cross correlation is used to find the structural self similar domain block for the input range block. To increase the searching speed, cross correlation is implemented in the frequency domain using FFT with one computational operation for all the domain blocks instead of individual block wise calculations. The encoding time is further minimized by applying rotation and reflection DFT properties to the IFFT of zero padded range blocks. The energy of overlap small size domain blocks is pre-computed for the entire reference frame and retaining the energies of the overlapped search window portion of previous adjacent block. Quadtree decompositions are obtained by using domain block motion compensated prediction error as a threshold to control the further partitions of the block. It provides a better level of adaption to the scene contents than fixed block size approach. The result shows that, on average, the proposed method can raise the encoding speed by 48.8 % and 90 % higher than NHEXS and CPM/NCIM algorithms respectively. The compression ratio and PSNR of the proposed method is increased by 15.41 and 0.89 dB higher than that of NHEXS on average. For low bit rate videos, the proposed algorithm achieve the high compression ratio above 120 with more than 31 dB PSNR.

Quadtree partitioning and extended weighted finite automata-based fractal colour video coding

Fractal coding technique has become the most popular coding technique in the recent development of image/video compression technologies for its better performance, achieving a high compression ratio, less decoding time and good reconstruction quality of image. This paper elaborates on the approach which is a combination of a quadtree partitioning scheme and extended weighted finite automata (EWFA) coding for fractal video compression based on the concept of intra-frame coding. The quadtree partitioning scheme is used to specify the address of each sub-image. It is observed that any image can be represented by the quadtree-based EWFA; the quadtree-based EWFA coding process is similar to fractal coding process; and also the size of domain pool increases dynamically during the process of quadtree-based EWFA encoding as that of in fractal coding. Experimentations are carried on standard databases like Soccer, Suzie, Bus, Football, Xylophone, Paris, Traffic, Akiyo, Ice and mobile sequence. The developed basic fractal image compression existing mechanism is also further implemented on video/image sequences based on the concept of intra-frame coding used for comparing the results with the proposed approach. Experimental results show that the EWFA encoding/decoding process improves the quality, compression ratio, encoding and decoding time of reconstructed image sequence.

Fractal Video Coding Using Fast Normalized Covariance Based Similarity Measure

Fast normalized covariance based similarity measure for fractal video compression with quadtree partitioning is proposed in this paper. To increase the speed of fractal encoding, a simplified expression of covariance between range and overlapped domain blocks within a search window is implemented in frequency domain. All the covariance coefficients are normalized by using standard deviation of overlapped domain blocks and these are efficiently calculated in one computation by using two different approaches, namely, FFT based and sum table based. Results of these two approaches are compared and they are almost equal to each other in all aspects, except the memory requirement. Based on proposed simplified similarity measure, gray level transformation parameters are computationally modified and isometry transformations are performed using rotation/reflection properties of IFFT. Quadtree decompositions are used for the partitions of larger size of range block, that is, 16 × 16, which is based on target level of motion compensated prediction error. Experimental result shows that proposed method can increase the encoding speed and compression ratio by 66.49% and 9.58%, respectively, as compared to NHEXS method with increase in PSNR by 0.41 dB. Compared to H.264, proposed method can save 20% of compression time with marginal variation in PSNR and compression ratio.

A Novel High Efficiency Fractal Multiview Video Codec

Multiview video which is one of the main types of three-dimensional (3D) video signals, captured by a set of video cameras from various viewpoints, has attracted much interest recently. Data compression for multiview video has become a major issue. In this paper, a novel high efficiency fractal multiview video codec is proposed. Firstly, intraframe algorithm based on the H.264/AVC intraprediction modes and combining fractal and motion compensation (CFMC) algorithm in which range blocks are predicted by domain blocks in the previously decoded frame using translational motion with gray value transformation is proposed for compressing the anchor viewpoint video. Then temporal-spatial prediction structure and fast disparity estimation algorithm exploiting parallax distribution constraints are designed to compress the multiview video data. The proposed fractal multiview video codec can exploit temporal and spatial correlations adequately. Experimental results show that it can obtain about 0.36 dB increase in the decoding quality and 36.21% decrease in encoding bitrate compared with JMVC8.5, and the encoding time is saved by 95.71%. The rate-distortion comparisons with other multiview video coding methods also demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.

An automatic region-based video sequence codec based on fractal compression

In order to improve the performance of fractal video coding, we explore a novel fractal video sequences codec with automatic region-based functionality. To increase the quality of decoding image, intra frame coding, deblocking loop filter and sub-pixel block matching are applied to the codec. An efficient searching algorithm is used to increase the compression ratio and encoding speed. Automatic region-based fractal video sequences coding reduces coding stream greatly. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is more robust, and provides much less encoding time and bitrate while maintaining the quality of decompression image than the conventional CPM/NCIM method and other related references. We compare the proposed algorithm with three algorithms in Refs. [24–26], and the results of all these four algorithms are compared with H.264. The bitrate of the proposed algorithm is decreased by 0.11% and the other algorithms are increased by 4.29%, 6.85% and 11.62%, respectively. The average PSNR degradations of the four algorithms are 0.71dB, 0.48dB, 0.48dB and 0.75dB. So the bitrate of the proposed algorithm is decreased and the other algorithms are increased. At the meantime the compression time is reduced greatly, about 79.19% on average. The results indicate that, on average, the proposed automatic region-based fractal video sequences coding system can save compression time 48.97% and bitrate 52.02% with some image quality degradation in comparison with H.264, since they are all above 32dB and the human eyes are insensitive to the differences.

Object-based stereo video compression using fractals and shape-adaptive DCT

Based on the classical fractal video compression method, an improved object-based stereo video compression scheme with Shape-Adaptive DCT is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we use more effective macroblock partition scheme instead of classical quadtree partition scheme; thus reducing the block searching strategy. The stereo fractal video coding is proposed which matches the macroblock with two reference frames in left and right view results in increasing compression ratio and reducing bit rate when transmitting compressed stereo data. The stereo codec combines the Motion Compensation Prediction (MCP) and Disparity Compensation Prediction (DCP). Fractal coding is adopted and each object is encoded independently by a prior video segmentation alpha plane, which is defined exactly as in MPEG-4. The testing results with the nature monocular and stereo video sequences provide promising performances at low bit rate coding. We believe it will be a powerful and efficient technique for the object-based monocular and stereo video sequences coding.

Fractal Video Compression using Block Matching Motion Estimation - A Study

The large usage of multimedia applications on internet and mobiles has increased the demand of compressed data, as to reduce the bandwidth requirement and transmission time. So block based method for video compression is getting more importance due to its effectiveness and easy implementation. Fractal video compression follows the property of self-similarity. The weighted finite automata exploits the property of selfsimilarity in a single image or sequence of images. In block matching motion estimation various algorithm has been proposed having different search pattern and strategies. The paper presents the review on different methods for fractal video compression.

An Efficient Fractal Video Sequences Codec with Multiviews

Multiview video consists of multiple views of the same scene. They require enormous amount of data to achieve high image quality, which makes it indispensable to compress multiview video. Therefore, data compression is a major issue for multiviews. In this paper, we explore an efficient fractal video codec to compress multiviews. The proposed scheme first compresses a view-dependent geometry of the base view using fractal video encoder with homogeneous region condition. With the extended fractional pel motion estimation algorithm and fast disparity estimation algorithm, it then generates prediction images of other views. The prediction image uses the image-based rendering techniques based on the decoded video. And the residual signals are obtained by the prediction image and the original image. Finally, it encodes residual signals by the fractal video encoder. The idea is also to exploit the statistical dependencies from both temporal and interview reference pictures for motion compensated prediction. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is consistently better than JMVC8.5, with 62.25% bit rate decrease and 0.37 dB PSNR increase based on the Bjontegaard metric, and the total encoding time (TET) of the proposed algorithm is reduced by 92%.

A novel fractal monocular and stereo video codec with object-based functionality

Based on the classical fractal video compression method, an improved monocular fractal compression method is proposed which includes using more effective macroblock partition scheme instead of classical quadtree partition scheme; using improved fast motion estimation to increase the calculation speed; using homo-I-frame like in H.264, etc. The monocular codec uses the motion compensated prediction (MCP) structure. And stereo fractal video coding is proposed which matches the macroblock with two reference frames in left and right views, and it results in increasing compression ratio and reducing bit rate/bandwidth when transmitting compressed video data. The stereo codec combines MCP and disparity compensated prediction. And a new method of object-based fractal video coding is proposed in which each object can be encoded and decoded independently with higher compression ratio and speed and less bit rate/bandwidth when transmitting compressed stereo video data greatly. Experimental results indicate that the proposed monocular method can raise compression ratio 3.6 to 7.5 times, speed up compression time 5.3 to 22.3 times, and improve the image quality 3.81 to 9.24 dB in comparison with circular prediction mapping and non-contractive interframe mapping. The PSNR of the proposed stereo video coding is about 0.17 dB higher than that of the proposed monocular video coding, and 0.69 dB higher than that of JMVC 4.0 on average. Comparing with the bit rate resulted by the proposed monocular video coding and JMVC 4.0, the proposed stereo video coding achieves, on average, 2.53 and 21.14 Kbps bit rate saving, respectively. The proposed object-based fractal monocular and stereo video coding methods are simple and effective, and they make the applications of fractal monocular and stereo video coding more flexible and practicable.

3D Searchless Fractal Video Encoding at Low Bit Rates

The development of compression techniques is crucial for several applications that require efficient storage and transmission of large data volumes. Fractal theory has been used in image and video compression due to advantages such as resolution independence, high compression rate, fast decoding, among others. Fractal compression approaches explore the presence of self-similarity to remove data redundancy, allowing high compression while maintaining low quality degradation. Early fractal compression methods presented prohibitive encoding time related to the search for similar regions in the image or video. This work describes a low bit-rate 3D searchless fractal video encoder to perform fast compression with high visual fidelity. Experiments demonstrate that the results of the proposed approach are superior when compared to those obtained by state-of-the-art x264 video encoder at very low bit rates in high motion video sequences.

Fractal video sequences coding with region-based functionality

In this paper, we explore the fractal video sequences coding in the context of region-based functionality. Since the main drawback of fractal coding is the high computational complexity, some schemes are proposed to speed up the encoding process. As fractal encoding essentially spends most time on the search for the best-matching block in a large domain pool, this paper firstly ameliorates the conventional CPM/NCIM method and then applies a new hexagon block-matching motion estimation technology into the fractal video coding. The images in the video sequences are encoded region by region according to a previously-computed segmentation map. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm spends less encoding time and achieves higher compression ratio and compression quality compared with the conventional CPM/NCIM method.

A Fast Fractal Video Coding Algorithm Using Cross-Hexagon Search for Block Motion Estimation

We propose a novel fractal video coding method using fast block-matching motion estimation to overcome the drawback of the time-consuming character in the fractal coding. As fractal encoding essentially spends most time on the search for the best-matching block in a large domain pool, search patterns and the center-biased characteristics of motion vector distribution have large impact on both search speed and quality of block motion estimation. In this paper, firstly, we propose a new hexagon search algorithm (NHEXS), and, secondly, we ameliorate, by using this NHEXS, the traditional CPM/NCIM, which is based on Fisher's quadtree partition. This NHEXS uses two cross-shaped search patterns as the first two initial steps and large/small hexagon-shaped patterns as the subsequent steps for fast block motion estimation (BME). NHEXS employs halfway stop technique to achieve significant speedup on sequences with stationary and quasistationary blocks. To further reduce the computational complexity, NHEXS employs modified partial distortion criterion (MPDC). Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm spends less encoding time and achieves higher compression ratio and compression quality compared with the traditional CPM/NCIM method.

A New Object-Based System for Fractal Video Sequences Compression

A novel object-based fractal monocular and stereo video compression scheme with quadtree-based motion and disparity compensation is proposed in this paper. Fractal coding is adopted and each object is encoded independently by a prior image segmentation alpha plane, which is defined exactly as in MPEG-4. The first n frames of right video sequence are encoded by using the Circular Prediction Mapping (CPM) and the remaining frames are encoded by using the Non Contractive Interframe Mapping (NCIM). The CPM and NCIM methods accomplish the motion estimation/ compensation of right video sequence. According to the different coding or user requirements, the spatial correlations between the left and right frames can be explored by partial or full affine transformation quadtree-based disparity estimation/ compensation, or simply by applying CPM/NCIM on left video sequence. The testing results with the nature monocular and stereo video sequences provide promising performances at low bit rate coding. We believe it will be a powerful and efficient technique for the object-based monocular and stereo video sequences coding.

Design of parallel algorithms for fractal video compression

The intrinsic independent features of the optimal codebook cubes searching process in fractal video compression systems are examined and exploited. The design of a suitable parallel algorithm reflecting the concept is presented. The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is chosen to be the communication tool for the implementation of the parallel algorithm on distributed memory parallel computers. Experimental results show that the parallel algorithm is able to reduce the compression time and achieve a high speed-up without changing the compression ratio and the quality of the decompressed image. A scalability test was also performed, and the results show that this parallel algorithm is scalable.