An efficient reference frame compression approach for video coding systems

This paper presents an efficient solution for external memory bandwidth reduction focusing in the state-of-art video coding standards, like H.264/AVC and HEVC. The proposed approach is based in reference frame compression using a differential coding and a hardware-efficiently adaptation of the traditional Huffman algorithm, besides, it is a lossless solution and fully complied to state-of-art video coding standards. This solution is entitled DRFVLC (Differential Reference Frame Variable-Length Coder) and it applies an inter-block differential coding to concentrate the values near to zero, and also, it uses one static Huffman table to avoid the cost of the on-the-fly Huffman statistical analysis. The use of DRFVLC reached an average compression rate higher than 46% for the evaluated video sequences, with computational cost of a single differential coding and a VLC, which means the solution is not a bottleneck of the video coding system.