Rate control for videophone using local perceptual cues

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 496 - 507
• Main Authors: Xiaokang Yang, Weisi Lin, Zhongkang Lu, Xiao Lin, Rahardja, S., EePing Ong, Susu Yao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.04.2005; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Broadcasting. Videocommunications. Audiovisual; Coding; Control systems; Cues; Exact sciences and technology; Human visual system (HVS); Humans; Information, signal and communications theory; Layout; Luminance; Masking; Mathematical models; Miscellaneous; Partial response channels; perception; Quantization; rate control; Rate-distortion; Signal processing; Skin; Surface layer; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Texture; Video coding; Videocommunications (networks and services); videophone; Videophones; Visual system; Wireless networks; Video coding; Visual system; Human visual system (HVS); Videocommunication; Flow rate regulation; Motion compensation; rate control; Performance analysis; Videophone; Visual perception; perception
• ISSN: 1051-8215; 1558-2205
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2005.844458

We present a method for extracting local visual perceptual cues and its application for rate control of videophone, in order to ensure the scarce bits to be assigned for maximum perceptual coding quality. The optimum quantization step is determined with the rate-distortion model considering the local perceptual cues in the visual signal. For extraction of the perceptual cues, luminance adaptation and texture masking are used as the stimulus-driven factors, while skin color serves as the cognition-driven factor in the current implementation. Both objective and subjective quality evaluations are given by evaluating the proposed perceptual rate control (PRC) scheme in the H.263 platform, and the evaluations show that the proposed PRC scheme achieves significant quality improvement in block-based coding for bandwidth-hungry applications.