Preprocessing of video signals for MPEG coding by clustering filter

We describe an application of the clustering filter to image sequence preprocessing for MPEG encoding. Since noise is unavoidable and compression is lossy, we propose and demonstrate that one can obtain better picture quality if one takes out noise before the video signal is fed into an encoder. This is where our contribution differs from previous work on preprocessing. We test our schemes on digital video in the CCIR 601 format converted from film using a standard telecine process. The results show that the motion estimation is more effective and motion-compensated difference signal is easier to encode, resulting in higher quality at a fixed bit rate or lower bit rate at a fixed quality