MPEG-4 very low bit-rate video compression by adaptively utilizing sprite to short sequences

In MPEG-4, a video sequence can be divided into foreground object and background objects that are independently encoded. Using sprites can dramatically compress the overall bit rate, but not all video sequences can be so encoded. This paper introduces MPEG-4 multimode coding; it offers automatic coding mode decision, video object generation and high compression efficiency. The source video sequence is segmented and each segment is automatically categorized as either "normal", which is encoded using MPEG-4 simple profile, or as "sprite". Coding experiments show that if the bit rate is low, multimode coding offers higher coding efficiency than regular MPEG-4 in terms of frame rate and image quality.