Hybrid-1D macroblock prediction for video compression

2009 appears to be the launching date for several activities intented to challenge the video compression standard H.264/AVC. Improvements upon H.264/AVC can be achieved either by breakthrough or incremental approaches. Due to the extreme fine tuning of H.264/AVC, the former seems tough. The latter however seems more achievable, even with the announced 50% coding efficiency improvement objective. In this highly challenging context, we propose a new scheme for macroblock partitioning and prediction. We extend the previously proposed Intra 1D scheme with a Skip 1D mode. Therefore, a macroblock is split in 1D partitions which can be predicted through two submodes in competition: Intra 1D or Skip 1D. As a second step, we further extend this scheme with an Inter 1D submode and provide the first keys to make this mode efficient. With the Intra 1D+Skip 1D scheme, an average 5.7% gain is reported compared to H.264/AVC, up to 10.1% for a given sequence. Preliminary results are also reported when the Inter 1D mode is added.