Scene Adaptive Coder

An efficient single-pass adaptive bandwidth compression technique using the discrete cosine transform is described. The coding process involves a simple thresholding and normalization operation on the transform coefficients. Adaptivity is achieved by using a rate buffer for channel rate equalization. The buffer status and input rate are monitored to generate a feedback normalization factor. Excellent results are demonstrated for coding of color images at 0.4 bits/pixel corresponding to real-time color television transmission over a 1.5 Mbit/s channel.