Digital HDTV compression using parallel motion-compensated transform coders

The authors suggest a parallel processing structure using the proposed international standard for visual telephony (CCITT P×64 kbs standard) as processing elements, to compress digital high definition television (HDTV) pictures. The basic idea is to partition an HDTV picture, in space or in frequency, into smaller sub-pictures and then compress each sub-picture using a CCITT P×64 kbs coder. This seems to be a cost-effective solution to the HDTV hardware. Since each sub-picture is processed by an independent coder, without coordination these coded sub-pictures may have unequal picture quality. To maintain a uniform quality HDTV picture, the following two issues are studied: sub-channel control strategy (bits allocated to each sub-picture); and quantization and buffer control strategy for individual sub-picture coders. Algorithms to resolve these problems and their computer simulations are presented