A bandwidth and memory efficient MPEG-4 shape encoder

We have developed a shape encoder hardware for MPEG-4 video coding. On the one hand, the alpha component is compressed and therefore, the size and memory access of alpha frame memory can be reduced to 50% and 56.25% respectively. On the other hand, an efficient data transfer scheme combining the run length coding and addressing mode can reduce average data transfer time to 9.39% and accelerate the shape encoding process. The shape encoder can support MPEG-4 main profile at Level 4 in real-time. In addition, verification and testing methods are also considered.