IMPROVED PREDICTION STRUCTURES FOR ENHANCEMENT LAYER IN FINE GRANULAR SCALABILITY VIDEO CODING

摘要

The present invention is directed to a technique for flexibly and efficiently coding of video data. The technique involves coding of a portion of the video data called base layer frames and coding of residual images generated from the video data and the prediction signal. The prediction for each video frame is generated using multiple decoded base layer frames and may use motion compensation. The residual images are called enhancement layer frames and are then coded. Based on this technique, since a wider locality of base layer frames are utilized, better prediction can be obtained. Since the resulting residual data in enhancement layer frames is small, they can be efficiently coded. For coding of enhancement layer frames, fine granular scalability techniques (such as DCT transform coding or wavelet coding) are employed. The decoding process is reverse of encoding process. Therefore, flexible, yet efficient coding and decoding of video is accomplished.