Variable frame-rate video coding based on global motion analysis

Abstract

This paper proposes a variable frame-rate video coding method based on global motion analysis for low bit rate video coding. Variable frame-rate video coding outperforms fixed frame-rate coding taking full adavantage of adjusting coding frame-rate according to the motion activity of video segments in the video sequence to be coded. Bit-rate can be reduced greatly in those video segments with low motion activity because lower coding frame-rate is used. Global motion analysis is utilized to evaluate the motion activity. The video sequence is classified into segments with low, medium and high motion activity according to global motion intensity. The results of variable frame-rate coding and fixed frame-rate coding methods are compared with test model of H.263 in order to evaluate the performance of proposed variable frame-rate coding method. Bit rate is reduced compared with fixed frame rate coding with the same image quality. © 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.