Novel quantized DCT for video encoder optimization

A novel technique is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of discrete cosine transform (DCT)-based video encoders. The proposed method merges the DCT and quantization into a single procedure, which is referred to as the novel quantized DCT (NQDCT), such that the DCT output does not need to be explicitly quantized. Thus, a lot of computations related to quantization can be saved. The video encoder´s performance using NQDCT is evaluated by comparing it with those using the traditional separate DCT and quantization method and the quantized DCT (QDCT) method. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed NQDCT outperforms the other two methods in improving the real-time performance for video encoding.