Embedded optical flow motion compensation and finite state hierarchical vector quantization

We propose a video coding and delivery scheme which is geared towards low bit-rate and real-time performance requirements. We use a finite state wavelet-based hierarchical lookup vector quantization (FSWHVQ) scheme, which embeds the optical flow calculations in table-lookups. This video coding scheme is both fast (table-lookups) and accurate (dense motion field), and avoids the blocking artifacts and poor prediction which plagues block coding schemes at low bit rates. For restricted image compression/transmission scenarios like teleconferencing, for which a good training set may be available, the FSWHVQ scheme may be viewed as storing an internal representation in its lookup tables, a valid and complete model of the problem domain.