• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.74-79
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose and design a new 0.264/AVC watermarking algorithm for protection of copyright by inserting a watermark after quantization. This invisible watermarking algorithm insets a watermark into chrominance components of I frame such that we can avoid degradation of original images. According to test results we could limit image degradation by 1dB, avoid bit rate increment within 2% and increase processing time by only 2%. The IP is designed by Hynix 0.25 micron technology and the maximum operating frequency of 115MHz is achieved. The PSNR of the embedded watermark is about 35dB according to the test result.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.235-242
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• 2008

To improve video quality and coding efficiency, H.264/AVC adopted an adaptive rate control. But this method has a problem as it cannot predict an accurate quantization parameter(QP) for the first frame. The first QP is decided among four constant values by using encoder input parameters. It does not consider encoding bits, results in significant fluctuation of the image quality and decreases the average quality of the whole coded sequence. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the first frame QP decision in the H.264/AVC encoder. The QP is decided by the existing algorithm and the first frame is encoded. According to the encoded bits, the new initial QP is decided. We can predict optimal value because there is a linear relationship between encoded bits and the new initial QP. Next, we re-encode the first frame using the new initial QP. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm not only achieves better quality than the state of the art algorithm, but also adopts a rate control forthe sequence that was impossible with the existing algorithm. By reducing fluctuation, subjective quality also improved.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.611-623
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• 2007

The H.264|AVC standard incorporates an intra prediction tool into inter frame coding. However, this leads to excessive amount of increase in encoding time, thus resulting in the difficulty in real-time implementation of software encoders. In this paper, we first propose an early decision on intra prediction coding and a fast intra prediction method using the characteristics of block contents and the context of neighboring block modes for the intra prediction in the inter frame coding of H.264/AVC. Basically, the proposed methods determine a skip condition on whether the $4{\times}4$ intra prediction is to be used in the inter frame coding by considering the content characteristics of each block to be encoded and the context of its neighboring blocks. The performance of our proposed methods is compared with the Joint Model reference software version 11.0 of H.264|AVC. The experimental results show that our proposed methods allow for 41.63% reduction in the total encoding time with negligible amounts of PSNR drops and bitrate increases, compared to the original Joint Model reference software version 11.0.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.64-70
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• 2011

In an H.264/AVC video encoder, the motion estimation at fractional pixel accuracy improves a coding efficiency and image quality. However, it requires additional computation overheads for fractional search and interpolation, and thus, reducing the computation complexity of fractional search becomes more important. This paper proposes a Pixel Re-composition Fractional Motion Estimation (PRFME) algorithm for an H.264/AVC video encoder. Fractional Motion Estimation performs interpolation for the overlapped pixels which increases the computational complexity. PRFME can reduce the computational complexity by eliminating the overlapped pixel interpolation. Compared with the fast full search, the proposed algorithm can reduce 18.1% of computational complexity, meanwhile, the maximum PSNR degradation is less than 0.067dB. Therefore, the proposed PRFME algorithm is quite suitable for mobile applications requiring low power and complexity.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.74-79
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• 2008

In an H.264/AVC video encoder, the motion estimation at fractional pixel accuracy improves a coding efficiency and image quality. However, it requires additional computation overheads for fractional search and interpolation, and thus, reducing the computation complexity of fractional search becomes more important. This paper proposes fast fractional search algorithms by combining the SASR(Simplified Adaptive Search Range) and the MSDSP(Mixed Small Diamond Search Pattern) with the predicted fractional motion vector. Compared with the full search and the prediction-based directional fractional pixel search, the proposed algorithms can reduce up to 93.2% and 81% of fractional search points, respectively with the maximum PSNR lost less than 0.04dB. Therefore, the proposed fast search algorithms are quite suitable for mobile applications requiring low power and complexity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.103-106
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• 2004

본 논문에서는 PC 기반 지상파 DMB(Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, T-DMB) 수신기를 위한 SW 최적화에 대해 설명한다. 이 수신기는 PC 외부에 지상파 DMB 신호를 안테나로 수신하여 복조하고 채널 복호하는 프론트 엔드(front-end) 수신 모듈을 이용, USB를 통하여 RS(Reed-Solomon) 부호화된 MPEG-2 TS(Transport Stream) 데이터를 읽어 들여 RS 복호, TS 역다중화, 비디오 복호, 오디오 복호 등의 SW 처리 과정을 거쳐 디스플레이 상에 수신 내용을 표시하게 된다. 본 논문에서는 저사양 PC에서도 T-DMB를 수신할 수 있도록 H.264/MPEG-4 AVC(Advanced Video Coding) 복호 과정을 최적화한 결과에 대해 설명한다.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.11 no.4 s.33
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• pp.386-395
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• 2006

Multi-view video coding technology demands the very high efficient coding technologies, because it has to encode a number of video sequences which are achieved from a number of video cameras. For this purpose, multi-view video coding introduces the inter-view prediction scheme between different views, but it shows a limitation of coding performance enhancement by adopting only new prediction method. Accordingly, we are going to achieve the more coding performance by enhancing dequantizer perfermance. Multi-view video coding is implemented basically based on H.264/AVC and uses the same quantization/de-quantization method as H.264/AVC does. The conventional quantizer and dequantizer is designed with the assumption that input residual signal follows the Laplacian PDF. However, it doesn't follow the fixed PDF type always. This mismatch between assumption and real data causes degradation of coding performance. To solve this problem, we propose the efficient de-quantization method based on quantized coefficients distribution at decoder without extra information. The extensive simulation results show that the proposed algorithm produces maximum $1.5\;dB{\sim}0.6\;dB$ at high bitrate compared with that of conventional method.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2008

H.264| MPEG-4 AVC is a new video codingstandard defined by JVT (Joint Video Team) which consists of ITU-T and ISO/IEC. Many techniques are adopted fur the compression efficiency: Especially, an intra prediction in an inter frame is one example but it leads to excessive amount of encoding time due to the decision of a candidate mode and a RDcost calculation. For this reason, a fast determination of the best intra prediction mode is the main issue for saving the encoding time. In this paper, by using the result of statistical relation between intra $16{\times}16$ and $4{\times}4$ intra predictions, the number of candidate modes for $4{\times}4$ intra prediction is reduced. Firstly, utilizing motion vector obtained after inter prediction, prediction of a block mode for each macroblock is made. If an intra prediction is needed, the correlation table between $16{\times}16$ and $4{\times}4$ intra predicted modes is created using the probability during each I frame-coding process. Secondly, using this result, the candidate modes for a $4{\times}4$ intra prediction that reaches a predefined specific probability value are only considered in the same GOP For the experiments, JM11.0, the reference software of H.264|MPEG-4 AVC is used and the experimental results show that the encoding time could be reduced by 51.24% in maximum with negligible amounts of PSNR drop and bitrate increase.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.8C
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• pp.703-711
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a multi-view coding(MVC) algorithm with considering view scalability. The proposed algorithm has a high compression efficiency by reducing inter-view redundancy through inter-view decomposition, and adaptively reconstructs a multi-view video from an encoded bit stream. Furthermore, a reference view can be decoded by a traditional H.264/AVC, and the other views are adaptively decoded at the receiver by filtering to support view scalability. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performed better than the conventional H.264 codec even though it offers the view scalability.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.28 no.12C
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• pp.1182-1191
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• 2003

In this paper, we propose a new hardware architecture for integer transform, quantizer, inverse quantizer, and inverse integer transform of a new video coding standard H.264/JVT. We describe the algorithm and derive hardware architecture emphasizing the importance of area for low cost and low power consumption. The proposed architecture has been verified by PCI-interfaced emulation board using APEX-II Alters FPGA and also by ASIC synthesis using Samsung 0.18 um CMOS cell library. The ASIC synthesis result shows that the proposed hardware can operate at 100 MHz, processing more than 1,300 QCIF video frames per second. The hardware is going to be used as a core module when implementing a complete H.264 video encoder/decoder ASIC for real-time multimedia application.