Zerotree pattern coding of motion picture residues for error-resilient transmission of video sequences

This paper describes a compression scheme for difference-image residues in video coding. Structured spatial patterns are used to map residue pixel values into a quadtree structure, which is then coded in significance order with the SPIHT algorithm. Thus the wavelet coefficient values of standard zerotree coding are replaced by untransformed (but carefully positioned) residue pixel values. The new zerotree pattern coding method compresses as well as zerotree wavelet coding and much better than DCT coding (as in MPEG) over error-free channels. Over noisy channels, zerotree pattern coding provides built-in error resilience, allowing transmission of residue data without error control overhead. A simple postprocessing technique provides additional error concealment.