A generic and automatic content-based approach for improved H.264/MPEG4-AVC video coding

A new content-based approach for improved H.264/MPEG4-AVC video coding is presented. The framework is generic because it is based on a closed-loop texture analysis by synthesis algorithm that can automatically identify and recover from video quality impairments through artifact detectors and appropriate countermeasures. The algorithm is flexible, for it can in principle be integrated into any standards-compliant video codec. The fundamental assumption of our approach is that many video scenes can be classified into subjectively relevant and irrelevant textures. The texture categorization is thereby done by a texture analyzer (encoder side), while the corresponding texture synthesizer performs the replacement of the subjectively irrelevant textures (decoder side), given the side information generated by the texture analyzer. When implementing the proposed approach into an H.264/MPEG4-AVC codec, bit rate savings of up to 33.3% compared to an H.264/MPEG4-AVC video codec without our approach are reported.