Efficient representation and coding of prediction residuals and parameters in frame-based animated mesh compression

For compression of 3-D dynamic meshes, the novel framework of so-called frame-based animated mesh compression (FAMC) has been introduced recently. In this context, we propose an efficient scheme for representation and statistical coding which is conceptually based on our previous work on context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC). After reviewing the basic principles of both CABAC and FAMC, we present suitable modifications and adaptations of both concepts in order to build an integrated solution with a high degree of coding efficiency. To this end, particular focus of our study has been put on the design of appropriate binarization and context modeling schemes. In our experiments, we obtained average bit-rate savings of more than 30% for a typical test set of dynamic meshes, when comparing the final design of our CABAC enriched FAMC scheme to the original version of FAMC using a conventional N-ary arithmetic coder. Our integrated approach has been adopted recently as part of the MPEG-4 Animated Framework extension (AFX).