Highly scalable video compression with scalable motion coding

For a scalable video coder to remain efficient over a wide range of bit-rates, some form of scalability must exist in the motion information. We propose a wavelet-based highly scalable video coder with scalable motion coding. Our proposed method involves the construction of quality layers for the coded wavelet sample data and a separate set of quality layers for scalably coded motion parameters. When the motion layers are truncated, the decoder receives a quantized version of the motion parameters used to generate the wavelet sample data. A linear model is used to infer the impact of motion quantization on reconstructed video distortion. An optimal tradeoff between the motion and subband bit-rates may then be found. Experimental results indicate that the cost of scalability is small. At low bit-rates, significant improvements are observed relative to lossless coding of the motion information.