Variable frame skipping scheme based on estimated quality of non-coded frames at decoder for real-time block-based video coding

This paper proposes an encoder employing variable frame skipping (VFS) to improve the video quality in low bit rate channels. The basic idea of the VFS mechanism is to decide and skip a suitable, non-fixed number of frames in the temporal domain to reduce bit usage. The saved bits can be allocated to enhance the spatial quality of the video. In the literature, several methods for frameskip decision have been proposed, but most of them only consider the similarities between neighboring coded frames as the decision criteria. Our proposed method takes into account the reconstruction of the skipped frames using motion-compensated frame interpolation at the decoder. The proposed VFS models the reconstructed quality of the skipped frame and, therefore, can provide a fast estimate to the frameskip at the encoder. The proposed VFS can decide the frameskip in real time, and its encoded video has better spatial-temporal bit allocation