Multi-frame motion-compensated video compression for the digital set-top box

Motion-compensated prediction based on multiple previous or future frames can enhance the compression efficiency of video coding. Multi-frame prediction can be applied as an extension to P-pictures, but also to B-pictures in the form of multi-hypothesis prediction. We review recent advances, several of which have been embraced by the ITU-T Rec. H.263 and the emerging JVT/H.26L standard, jointly developed by ITU-T and ISO/IEC MPEG. Already, JVT/H.26L video outperforms MPEG-2 by a factor greater than 2×. These recent developments could play a significant role in future digital set-top boxes.