An affordable solution to real-time video compression

In today's multimedia market, there are several hardware and software solutions to the transmission of video over a low bit-rate channel. The decoding part is relatively simple and inexpensive to implement. However, the encoding of full-size, high-quality video in real-time remains a complex and costly matter for the compression algorithms currently in use. A real-time digital video compression system (DVCS) has been developed to provide a solution to this problem, and make real-time video applications such as videoconferencing, digital video editing and several others affordable. Three-dimensional subband coding is used in the compression process because this algorithm is most compatible with the human visual system. The DVCS described in this paper is based on a simple subband coding algorithm which can be implemented in ASIC form with less than 50,000 gates. Hence, a much simpler and less expensive encoder/decoder chip can be implemented. The DVCS supports full screen, full-motion images at 30 frames/sec. A number of other standard resolution formats such as CCIR 601, CIF and QCIF are also supported. The intrinsic scalability of subband coding makes the compression system expandable to high-definition television by simply adding an additional image detail band.