Improved high-definition video by encoding at an intermediate resolution

Andrew Segall, Michael Elad, Peyman Milanfar, Richard Webb, Chad Fogg

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the compression of high-definition video sequences for bandwidth sensitive applications. We show that down-sampling the image sequence prior to encoding and then up-sampling the decoded frames increases compression efficiency. This is particularly true at lower bit-rates, as direct encoding of the high-definition sequence requires a large number of blocks to be signaled. We survey previous work that combines a resolution change and compression mechanism. We then illustrate the success of our proposed approach through simulations. Both MPEG-2 and H.264 scenarios are considered. Given the benefits of the approach, we also interpret the results within the context of traditional spatial scalability.