Variable block-size transforms for H.264/AVC

A concept for variable block-size transform coding is presented. It is called adaptive block-size transforms (ABT) and was proposed for coding of high resolution and interlaced video in the emerging video coding standard H.264/AVC. The basic idea of inter ABT is to align the block size used for transform coding of the prediction error to the block size used for motion compensation. Intra ABT employs variable block-size prediction and transforms for encoding. With ABT, the maximum feasible signal length is exploited for transform coding. Simulation results reveal a performance increase up to 12% overall rate savings and 0.9 dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio.