Extending H.264/AVC with a background sprite prediction mode

The latest standardized hybrid video codec, H.264/AVC, significantly outperforms earlier video coding standards. Despite combining improved and new algorithms within this codec, it is still possible to find methods which lead to a higher coding efficiency. We tackle the prediction problem adding a new prediction mode to the codec. It has been shown that the generation of a background sprite image containing all the background information of a certain sequence is very useful e.g. for object-based video coding. We use a pre-generated background sprite image for creating a new prediction mode in the encoder loop. For the current frame to be compensated, blocks reconstructed from the background sprite are used beside the remaining modes to calculate the residual. The rate-distortion optimization decides which mode is taken. Experimental results show the improvement using the new sprite prediction (SP) mode with the considered test sequences.