Rate buffered fractal video

We report real time fractal coding of 176 by 144 luminance images on a 33 MHz i-486 computer. With a zero searching first order (bilinear) Bath fractal transform, square blocks of 64 pixels are coded in 250 μsec and decoded in 200 μsec. This permits coding of 40% of each frame in a 25 Hz video sequence, or full coding at 10 Hz. By transmitting only those blocks of greatest error, we can obtain any degree of data compression. Useful video sequences of talking heads have been achieved with rates as low as 40 kbits/sec. We describe the techniques used, give illustrations of the degradation, and show the evolution of the errors in the decoded sequence as various events occur. The overall compression at 40 kbits/sec is 99:1, with further error reductions possible