Direct N-point DCT computation from three adjacent N/3-point DCT coefficients

An efficient method for computing a length-N Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) from three consecutive length-N/3 DCTs is proposed. This method differs from previous ones in that it reduces considerable 31-38% arithmetic operations and uses only length-N/3 DCTs instead of length-N DCTs. We also find its great applications in fractional scaling of a block DCT-based image by the factor of 1/2/sup /spl alpha//3/sup /spl beta//. This would be very useful in high-definition television (HDTV) standard, whose display size is usually 16:9. The comparison with conventional methods is provided.